View allAll Photos Tagged cryptid

Created on Dreamwombo

dream.ai/

 

PROMPT:

the dork monster in cryptid taxidermy in post apocalyptic wonderland, in heaven everything is fine by lady in the radiator and brothers quay, stopmotion cinema photograph by h.r. giger, by giuseppe arcimboldo, hieronymus bosch, art nouveau, intricately detailed, hyperrealism, fantasy, imperial colors; bogomils universe

Had to make my vamp lord from V-Rising now that Cryptid made the perfect head to match.

 

Head: The Agma by Cryptid

Hair: Aii & Ego

Scythe: Chronos by Vae Victis

Pants: Cyclist pants by Contraption

Shirt: Pathos by Toksik

Skin overlays used : MAZE-Frankie

I have no idea what creature this is supposed to be- it's some sort of plesiosaur but the spiky head looks well out of place.

 

Anyway, I like it- it has a happy face and the cryptid nature only adds to the appeal!

Variation of a text-prompt generation in AI Dream Wombo. The text contained the word VAMPIRE CHIBI

www.wombo.art/

 

PROMPT

"cryptid vampire chibi"

 

the seed image was from Nightcafe creation detail

  

"The Kongamato has been seen by African natives and European explorers for some time, and almost all of the accounts say it is a reddish blackish creature resembling a pterosaur. Some other people have come back with large, deep wounds that they claim to be from the Kongamato. Eyewitness accounts say the creature has teeth, leathery wings, a beak, and claws. Some British scientists and explorers have shown natives drawings of pterosaurs, and the natives were said to have a terrified reaction."

 

pencil, watercolors and digital

 

check out the "Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology" here: www.behance.net/gallery/Illustrated-Encyclopedia-of-Crypt...

 

Thank you for viewing!

created in NIGHTCAFE - Char Design (Community Lora)

 

Angrboða - a Jötunn (giant) of old Norse, mate of Loki, mother of the Fenrir wolf, Jörmungandr the midgard serpent and Hel, ruler of the underworld.

 

TEXT ONLY - the prompt came from my friend @IAmWhoIWasNot - to which I added the words 'Bogomil's Universe' and 'Cryptid Taxidermy'.

 

The evolve chain goes back two steps, the original iteration was text only. However, Char Design is a Community Lora, so this one is not eligible for entry in Challenges. Well, it doesn't break my heart - I rarely put stuff into Challenges anymore.

 

What I am questioning though about this image is the taste of Loki in his selection of mates.

 

PROMPT:

"Painting by H R Giger, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Art Nouveau, A surreal hyperrealistic digital oil painting of a woman with a veil and tear drop, a screaming man, large eel like creature devouring glass balls with faces inside, random eye balls, intricate textures, insanely surreal, smooth flowing composition based on phi, style of Gustave Dore and Hieronymus Bosch and Brian Froud, H R Giger, 3D, fractal effects. cryptid taxidermy, bogomils universe, imperial colors."

 

About Dr. Takeshi Yamada:

 

Educator, medical assistant, author and artist Takeshi Yamada was born and raised at a traditional and respectable house of samurai in Osaka, Japan in 1960. He studied art at Nakanoshima College of Art in Osaka, Japan. As an international exchange student of Osaka Art University, he moved to the United States in 1983 and studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA and Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD in 1983-85, and completed his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1985.

 

Yamada obtained his Master of Fine Art Degree in 1987 at the University of Michigan, School of Art in Ann Arbor, MI. Yamada’s “Visual Anthropology Artworks” reflects unique, distinctive and often quickly disappearing culture around him. In 1987, Yamada moved to Chicago, and by 1990, Yamada successfully fused Eastern and Western visual culture and variety of cross-cultural mythology in urban allegories, and he became a major figure of the River North (“SUHU” district) art scene. During that time he also developed a provocative media persona and established his unique style of super-realism paintings furnishing ghostly images of people and optically enhanced pictorial structures. By 1990, his artworks were widely exhibited internationally. In 2000, Yamada moved to New York City.

 

Today, he is highly media-featured and internationally famed for his “rogue taxidermy” sculptures and large-scale installations, which he calls “specimens” rather than “artworks”. He also calls himself “super artist” and “gate keeper” rather than the “(self-expressing) artist“. His passion for Cabinet of Curiosities started when he was in kindergarten, collecting natural specimens and built his own Wunderkammer (German word to express “Cabinet of Curiosities“). At age eight, he started creating “rogue taxidermy monsters” such as two-headed lizards, by assembling different parts of animal carcasses.

 

Internationally, Yamada had over 600 major fine art exhibitions including 50 solo exhibitions including Spain, The Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Columbia, and the United States. Yamada also taught classes and made public speeches at over 40 educational institutions including American Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State Museum, Laurenand Rogers Museum of Art, International Museum of Surgical Science, University of Minnesota, Montana State University, Eastern Oregon University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Mount Vernon Nazarene College, Salem State College, Osaka College of Arts, Chemeketa Community College, Maryland Institute College of Art, etc. Yamada’s artworks are collection of over 30 museums and universities in addition to hundreds of corporate/private art collectors internationally. Yamada and his artworks were featured in over 400 video websites. In addition, rogue taxidermy artworks, sideshow gaffs, cryptozoological artworks, large sideshow banners and showfronts created by Yamada in the last 40 years have been exhibited at over 100 of state fairs and festivals annually nationwide, up to and including the present.

  

Yamada won numerous prestigious awards and honors i.e., “International Man of the Year”, “Outstanding Artists and Designers of the 20th Century”, “2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century”, “International Educator of the Year”, “One Thousand Great Americans”, “Outstanding People of the 20th Century”, “21st Century Award for Achievement”, “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in The World”. The Mayors of New Orleans, Louisiana and Gary, Indiana awarded him the “Key to the City”. Yamada’s artworks are collections of many museums and universities/colleges i.e., Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Chicago Athenaeum Museum, Eastern Oregon University, Montana State University and Ohio State University.

 

Yamada was profiled in numerous TV programs in the United States, Japan and Philippine, Columbia, i.e., A&E History Channel, Brooklyn Cable Access Television, “Chicago’s Very Own” in Chicago, “Takeshi Yamada’s Divine Comedy” in New Orleans, and Chicago Public Television’s Channel ID. Yamada also published 22 books based on his each major fine art projects i.e., “Homage to the Horseshoe Crab”, Medical Journal of the Artist”, “Graphic Works 1996-1999”, “Phantom City”, “Divine Comedy”, “Miniatures”, “Louisville”, “Visual Anthropology 2000”, “Heaven and Hell”, “Citizen Kings” and “Dukes and Saints” in the United States. In prints, Yamada and his artworks have been featured in numerous books, magazine and newspapers internationally i.e., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time out New York (full page color interview), Washington Times, The Fine Art Index, New American Paintings, Village Voice 9full page interview), Chicago Art Scene (front cover), Chicago Tribune Magazine (major color article), Chicago Japanese American News, Strong Coffee, Reader, Milwaukee Journal, Clarion, Kaleidoscope, Laurel Leader-Call, The Advertiser News, Times-Picayune (front page, major color articles), Michigan Alumnus (major color article), Michigan Today (major color article), Mardi Gras Guide (major color article), The Ann Arbor News (front covers), Park Slope Courier (color pages), 24/7 (color pages), Brooklyn Free Press (front cover) and The World Tribune.

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Reference (videos featuring sea rabbits and Dr. Takeshi Yamada):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ek-GsW9ay0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJK04yQUX2o&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrCCxV5S-EE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QnW26dQKg&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpVCqEjFXk0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NlcIZTFIj8&feature=fvw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UPzGvwq57g

s87.photobucket.com/albums/k130/katiecavell/NYC%2008/Coney%20Island/?action=view&current=SeaRabbitVid.mp4

www.animalnewyork.com/2012/what-are-you-doing-tonight-con...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAdsChmSR8

 

Reference (sea rabbit artifacts)

www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/06/coney-island-sea-rabbit...

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417188428/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417189548/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5416579163/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417191794/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192426/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192938/in/photostream

 

Reference (flickr):

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit15/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit14/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit13

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit12

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit11

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit10

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit9/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit8/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit7

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit6

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit5/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit4/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit2/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit1/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders3/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders2

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/

www.flickr.com/photos/takeshiyamadapaintings/

 

Reference (newspaper articles and reviews):

www.amctv.com/shows/immortalized/about

blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/immortalized-cast-photos/...

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021750...

www.villagevoice.com/2006-11-07/nyc-life/the-stuffing-dre...

karlshuker.blogspot.com/2011/06/giant-sea-serpents-and-ch...

amusingthezillion.com/2011/12/08/takeshi-yamadas-jersey-d...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/12/07/art-of-the-day-freak-tax...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/10/27/oct-29-at-coney-island-l...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/09/18/photo-of-the-day-takeshi...

amusingthezillion.com/2009/11/07/thru-dec-31-at-coney-isl...

4strange.blogspot.com/2009/02/ten-of-takeshi-yamada-colle...

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/5440224421/siz...

 

Reference (fine art websites):

www.roguetaxidermy.com/members_detail.php?id=528

www.brooklynartproject.com/photo/photo/listForContributor...

www.bsagarts.org/member-listing/takeshi-yamada/

www.horseshoecrab.org/poem/feature/takeshi.html

www.artfagcity.com/2012/09/06/recommended-go-brooklyn-stu...

 

Reference (other videos):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=otSh91iC3C4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhIR-lz1Mrs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttREu63Ksg

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

AI created on Dreamwombo

 

PROMPT:

Aquirre The Cryptid Taxidermy Hideout set in the Amazon Jungle, in post apocalyptic wonderland, in heaven everything is fine by lady in the radiator and brothers quay, stopmotion cinema photograph by Werner Herzog, by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Hieronymus Bosch, Art Nouveau, intricately detailed, hyperrealism, fantasy, imperial colors; Bogomils Universe

AI created in Dream Wombo

 

PROMPT.

Fantasy artwork merging (Albino Devil in the Bush with Brain Salad Surgery:1.3), highly detailed and elegant, influenced by Tim Burton, Alexander Jansson, and Bill Carman, award-winning, psychedelic, photorealistic, ultra-realistic, (Ayahuasca-inspired:1.3), high definition, crisp quality, fantasy, cryptid taxidermy, bogomils universe

About Dr. Takeshi Yamada:

 

Educator, medical assistant, author and artist Takeshi Yamada was born and raised at a traditional and respectable house of samurai in Osaka, Japan in 1960. He studied art at Nakanoshima College of Art in Osaka, Japan. As an international exchange student of Osaka Art University, he moved to the United States in 1983 and studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA and Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD in 1983-85, and completed his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1985.

 

Yamada obtained his Master of Fine Art Degree in 1987 at the University of Michigan, School of Art in Ann Arbor, MI. Yamada’s “Visual Anthropology Artworks” reflects unique, distinctive and often quickly disappearing culture around him. In 1987, Yamada moved to Chicago, and by 1990, Yamada successfully fused Eastern and Western visual culture and variety of cross-cultural mythology in urban allegories, and he became a major figure of the River North (“SUHU” district) art scene. During that time he also developed a provocative media persona and established his unique style of super-realism paintings furnishing ghostly images of people and optically enhanced pictorial structures. By 1990, his artworks were widely exhibited internationally. In 2000, Yamada moved to New York City.

 

Today, he is highly media-featured and internationally famed for his “rogue taxidermy” sculptures and large-scale installations, which he calls “specimens” rather than “artworks”. He also calls himself “super artist” and “gate keeper” rather than the “(self-expressing) artist“. His passion for Cabinet of Curiosities started when he was in kindergarten, collecting natural specimens and built his own Wunderkammer (German word to express “Cabinet of Curiosities“). At age eight, he started creating “rogue taxidermy monsters” such as two-headed lizards, by assembling different parts of animal carcasses.

 

Internationally, Yamada had over 600 major fine art exhibitions including 50 solo exhibitions including Spain, The Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Columbia, and the United States. Yamada also taught classes and made public speeches at over 40 educational institutions including American Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State Museum, Laurenand Rogers Museum of Art, International Museum of Surgical Science, University of Minnesota, Montana State University, Eastern Oregon University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Mount Vernon Nazarene College, Salem State College, Osaka College of Arts, Chemeketa Community College, Maryland Institute College of Art, etc. Yamada’s artworks are collection of over 30 museums and universities in addition to hundreds of corporate/private art collectors internationally. Yamada and his artworks were featured in over 400 video websites. In addition, rogue taxidermy artworks, sideshow gaffs, cryptozoological artworks, large sideshow banners and showfronts created by Yamada in the last 40 years have been exhibited at over 100 of state fairs and festivals annually nationwide, up to and including the present.

  

Yamada won numerous prestigious awards and honors i.e., “International Man of the Year”, “Outstanding Artists and Designers of the 20th Century”, “2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century”, “International Educator of the Year”, “One Thousand Great Americans”, “Outstanding People of the 20th Century”, “21st Century Award for Achievement”, “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in The World”. The Mayors of New Orleans, Louisiana and Gary, Indiana awarded him the “Key to the City”. Yamada’s artworks are collections of many museums and universities/colleges i.e., Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Chicago Athenaeum Museum, Eastern Oregon University, Montana State University and Ohio State University.

 

Yamada was profiled in numerous TV programs in the United States, Japan and Philippine, Columbia, i.e., A&E History Channel, Brooklyn Cable Access Television, “Chicago’s Very Own” in Chicago, “Takeshi Yamada’s Divine Comedy” in New Orleans, and Chicago Public Television’s Channel ID. Yamada also published 22 books based on his each major fine art projects i.e., “Homage to the Horseshoe Crab”, Medical Journal of the Artist”, “Graphic Works 1996-1999”, “Phantom City”, “Divine Comedy”, “Miniatures”, “Louisville”, “Visual Anthropology 2000”, “Heaven and Hell”, “Citizen Kings” and “Dukes and Saints” in the United States. In prints, Yamada and his artworks have been featured in numerous books, magazine and newspapers internationally i.e., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time out New York (full page color interview), Washington Times, The Fine Art Index, New American Paintings, Village Voice 9full page interview), Chicago Art Scene (front cover), Chicago Tribune Magazine (major color article), Chicago Japanese American News, Strong Coffee, Reader, Milwaukee Journal, Clarion, Kaleidoscope, Laurel Leader-Call, The Advertiser News, Times-Picayune (front page, major color articles), Michigan Alumnus (major color article), Michigan Today (major color article), Mardi Gras Guide (major color article), The Ann Arbor News (front covers), Park Slope Courier (color pages), 24/7 (color pages), Brooklyn Free Press (front cover) and The World Tribune.

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Reference (videos featuring sea rabbits and Dr. Takeshi Yamada):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ek-GsW9ay0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJK04yQUX2o&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrCCxV5S-EE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QnW26dQKg&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpVCqEjFXk0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NlcIZTFIj8&feature=fvw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UPzGvwq57g

s87.photobucket.com/albums/k130/katiecavell/NYC%2008/Coney%20Island/?action=view&current=SeaRabbitVid.mp4

www.animalnewyork.com/2012/what-are-you-doing-tonight-con...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAdsChmSR8

 

Reference (sea rabbit artifacts)

www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/06/coney-island-sea-rabbit...

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417188428/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417189548/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5416579163/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417191794/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192426/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192938/in/photostream

 

Reference (flickr):

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit15/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit14/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit13

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit12

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit11

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit10

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit9/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit8/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit7

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit6

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit5/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit4/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit2/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit1/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders3/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders2

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/

www.flickr.com/photos/takeshiyamadapaintings/

 

Reference (newspaper articles and reviews):

www.amctv.com/shows/immortalized/about

blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/immortalized-cast-photos/...

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021750...

www.villagevoice.com/2006-11-07/nyc-life/the-stuffing-dre...

karlshuker.blogspot.com/2011/06/giant-sea-serpents-and-ch...

amusingthezillion.com/2011/12/08/takeshi-yamadas-jersey-d...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/12/07/art-of-the-day-freak-tax...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/10/27/oct-29-at-coney-island-l...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/09/18/photo-of-the-day-takeshi...

amusingthezillion.com/2009/11/07/thru-dec-31-at-coney-isl...

4strange.blogspot.com/2009/02/ten-of-takeshi-yamada-colle...

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/5440224421/siz...

 

Reference (fine art websites):

www.roguetaxidermy.com/members_detail.php?id=528

www.brooklynartproject.com/photo/photo/listForContributor...

www.bsagarts.org/member-listing/takeshi-yamada/

www.horseshoecrab.org/poem/feature/takeshi.html

www.artfagcity.com/2012/09/06/recommended-go-brooklyn-stu...

 

Reference (other videos):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=otSh91iC3C4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhIR-lz1Mrs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttREu63Ksg

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

RIGGED TO LEGACY M/ ATHLETIC

 

3 BASE COLORS + 5 BLACK TANK GRAPHICS

 

PLEASE TRY DEMO BEFORE BUYING

 

@ CRYPTID EVENT

Commentary.

 

World famous slopes plunge into the cryptid-hunter’s mecca or the alcoholic’s hallucination centre.

True or not, the “monster” saga should never

diminish or over-ride the sobering beauty and spirit of this place.

 

Looking south from over 800 feet above Lairgmore we see the sharply reflected, pine-laden slopes of Tor Point towards the north-eastern end of Loch Ness.

Across the waters above the village of Dores

the mast marks a point over 1,500 feet above the looming depths.

 

An iconic view of an iconic lake.

How could a thousand foot deep chasm, twenty-three miles long and up to a mile and a half wide, with an endless food supply, never frozen water, blocked from the sea 10,000 years ago, harbour a colony of unidentified creatures?

Impossible!

Ridiculous!

 

created in NIGHTCAFE - Stable Diffusion XL mode

 

Real Cartoon XL v4 created a rather elegant 'golden' style.

 

15 different Klimt-style poses based originally on a found input image, created with different Klimt prompts and using different modes, evolving and duplicating.

 

PROMPT:

self aware machines by Gustav Klimt austin osman spare, toyen, caravaggio jean benoit Post-Production, artstation, john salt detailed intricate, dystopian hypermaximalist, dreamlike ornate, hyperrealistic, ethereal 16k surrealistic, spectral, imperial colors, fantastic view, cinematic postprocessing, Surrealism, H.R. Giger, Giger Alien, cryptid taxidermy museum

 

To celebrate, we're hosting a FATPACK GIVEAWAY 🎉 (Valid only on our original Facebook post).

💥 How to participate:

1️⃣ Like this post.

2️⃣ Share it with your friends.

3️⃣ Follow our Facebook page: Injured Store.

4️⃣ Comment your username below.

🎁 TWO WINNERS will receive the FULL FATPACK with all the exclusive textures!

What’s included in the RABBIT BEANIE?

✔️ Unisex beanie – unrigged and resizable.

✔️ HUD with 4 graphic packs (sold separately).

✔️ FATPACK includes 5 exclusive textures in one HUD.

✔️ Compatible with any head or style.

🎀 Graphics include punk, emo, and Y2K-inspired themes — perfect for alt looks!

📍 Available at The Cryptid Event

️ 11th of the month @ 12 PM SLT

You can try the HUD at our event booth!

⏳ Giveaway ends right when the event opens — that means TOMORROW!

Don’t miss your chance to win ✨

COPY – NO MOD – NO TRANS

new release'

༺ 。 .ཐི♱ཋྀ. 。༻

+gosick {dahlia shape}

 

out 18th at 12pm SLT @ Cryptid Event

Commentary.

  

Spring snow in the Highlands.

South-West from Dores beach this image shows nearly the whole length of Loch Ness.

It certainly shows twenty of the twenty-five miles of its length

from Fort Augustus to Abban Water and Loch Dochfour.

 

The three-hundred and fifty-mile fault line of which it is a part,

extending from the north part of the Moray Firth to Ireland,

reaches a vertical height of over a mile, when adding the height of Ben Nevis to the depth of Loch Ness.

At Urquhart Bay the chasm created by tectonic movement and subsequent glaciers, reaches two miles in width.

 

In this view, Urquhart Bay, is seen on the right,

just below the snowy heights of Meall-Fhuar Mhonaidh, at 700 metres or 2,300 feet.

 

On this day it was no more than a giant mill-pond

but in misty conditions, as darkness descends,

its mood can become malevolent, sinister and un-nerving.

Whether prehistoric cryptids swim in its murky, peaty waters

or not, it can stir the blood and the imagination.

 

Today, peaceful and full of promise,

spring was here!

 

About Dr. Takeshi Yamada:

 

Educator, medical assistant, author and artist Takeshi Yamada was born and raised at a traditional and respectable house of samurai in Osaka, Japan in 1960. He studied art at Nakanoshima College of Art in Osaka, Japan. As an international exchange student of Osaka Art University, he moved to the United States in 1983 and studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA and Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD in 1983-85, and completed his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1985.

 

Yamada obtained his Master of Fine Art Degree in 1987 at the University of Michigan, School of Art in Ann Arbor, MI. Yamada’s “Visual Anthropology Artworks” reflects unique, distinctive and often quickly disappearing culture around him. In 1987, Yamada moved to Chicago, and by 1990, Yamada successfully fused Eastern and Western visual culture and variety of cross-cultural mythology in urban allegories, and he became a major figure of the River North (“SUHU” district) art scene. During that time he also developed a provocative media persona and established his unique style of super-realism paintings furnishing ghostly images of people and optically enhanced pictorial structures. By 1990, his artworks were widely exhibited internationally. In 2000, Yamada moved to New York City.

 

Today, he is highly media-featured and internationally famed for his “rogue taxidermy” sculptures and large-scale installations, which he calls “specimens” rather than “artworks”. He also calls himself “super artist” and “gate keeper” rather than the “(self-expressing) artist“. His passion for Cabinet of Curiosities started when he was in kindergarten, collecting natural specimens and built his own Wunderkammer (German word to express “Cabinet of Curiosities“). At age eight, he started creating “rogue taxidermy monsters” such as two-headed lizards, by assembling different parts of animal carcasses.

 

Internationally, Yamada had over 600 major fine art exhibitions including 50 solo exhibitions including Spain, The Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Columbia, and the United States. Yamada also taught classes and made public speeches at over 40 educational institutions including American Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State Museum, Laurenand Rogers Museum of Art, International Museum of Surgical Science, University of Minnesota, Montana State University, Eastern Oregon University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Mount Vernon Nazarene College, Salem State College, Osaka College of Arts, Chemeketa Community College, Maryland Institute College of Art, etc. Yamada’s artworks are collection of over 30 museums and universities in addition to hundreds of corporate/private art collectors internationally. Yamada and his artworks were featured in over 400 video websites. In addition, rogue taxidermy artworks, sideshow gaffs, cryptozoological artworks, large sideshow banners and showfronts created by Yamada in the last 40 years have been exhibited at over 100 of state fairs and festivals annually nationwide, up to and including the present.

  

Yamada won numerous prestigious awards and honors i.e., “International Man of the Year”, “Outstanding Artists and Designers of the 20th Century”, “2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century”, “International Educator of the Year”, “One Thousand Great Americans”, “Outstanding People of the 20th Century”, “21st Century Award for Achievement”, “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in The World”. The Mayors of New Orleans, Louisiana and Gary, Indiana awarded him the “Key to the City”. Yamada’s artworks are collections of many museums and universities/colleges i.e., Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Chicago Athenaeum Museum, Eastern Oregon University, Montana State University and Ohio State University.

 

Yamada was profiled in numerous TV programs in the United States, Japan and Philippine, Columbia, i.e., A&E History Channel, Brooklyn Cable Access Television, “Chicago’s Very Own” in Chicago, “Takeshi Yamada’s Divine Comedy” in New Orleans, and Chicago Public Television’s Channel ID. Yamada also published 22 books based on his each major fine art projects i.e., “Homage to the Horseshoe Crab”, Medical Journal of the Artist”, “Graphic Works 1996-1999”, “Phantom City”, “Divine Comedy”, “Miniatures”, “Louisville”, “Visual Anthropology 2000”, “Heaven and Hell”, “Citizen Kings” and “Dukes and Saints” in the United States. In prints, Yamada and his artworks have been featured in numerous books, magazine and newspapers internationally i.e., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time out New York (full page color interview), Washington Times, The Fine Art Index, New American Paintings, Village Voice 9full page interview), Chicago Art Scene (front cover), Chicago Tribune Magazine (major color article), Chicago Japanese American News, Strong Coffee, Reader, Milwaukee Journal, Clarion, Kaleidoscope, Laurel Leader-Call, The Advertiser News, Times-Picayune (front page, major color articles), Michigan Alumnus (major color article), Michigan Today (major color article), Mardi Gras Guide (major color article), The Ann Arbor News (front covers), Park Slope Courier (color pages), 24/7 (color pages), Brooklyn Free Press (front cover) and The World Tribune.

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Reference (videos featuring sea rabbits and Dr. Takeshi Yamada):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ek-GsW9ay0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJK04yQUX2o&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrCCxV5S-EE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QnW26dQKg&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpVCqEjFXk0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NlcIZTFIj8&feature=fvw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UPzGvwq57g

s87.photobucket.com/albums/k130/katiecavell/NYC%2008/Coney%20Island/?action=view&current=SeaRabbitVid.mp4

www.animalnewyork.com/2012/what-are-you-doing-tonight-con...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAdsChmSR8

 

Reference (sea rabbit artifacts)

www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/06/coney-island-sea-rabbit...

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417188428/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417189548/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5416579163/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417191794/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192426/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192938/in/photostream

 

Reference (flickr):

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit15/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit14/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit13

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit12

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit11

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit10

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit9/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit8/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit7

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit6

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit5/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit4/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit2/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit1/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders3/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders2

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/

www.flickr.com/photos/takeshiyamadapaintings/

 

Reference (newspaper articles and reviews):

www.amctv.com/shows/immortalized/about

blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/immortalized-cast-photos/...

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021750...

www.villagevoice.com/2006-11-07/nyc-life/the-stuffing-dre...

karlshuker.blogspot.com/2011/06/giant-sea-serpents-and-ch...

amusingthezillion.com/2011/12/08/takeshi-yamadas-jersey-d...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/12/07/art-of-the-day-freak-tax...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/10/27/oct-29-at-coney-island-l...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/09/18/photo-of-the-day-takeshi...

amusingthezillion.com/2009/11/07/thru-dec-31-at-coney-isl...

4strange.blogspot.com/2009/02/ten-of-takeshi-yamada-colle...

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/5440224421/siz...

 

Reference (fine art websites):

www.roguetaxidermy.com/members_detail.php?id=528

www.brooklynartproject.com/photo/photo/listForContributor...

www.bsagarts.org/member-listing/takeshi-yamada/

www.horseshoecrab.org/poem/feature/takeshi.html

www.artfagcity.com/2012/09/06/recommended-go-brooklyn-stu...

 

Reference (other videos):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=otSh91iC3C4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhIR-lz1Mrs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttREu63Ksg

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Variation of a text-prompt generation in AI Deep Dream. The text contained the words HIERONYMUS BOSCH, H.R. GIGER and ARCIMBOLDO.

deepdreamgenerator.com/

 

The initial seed image was done on Nightcafe, using a detail from one of my old paintings. It has gone through quite some transformations.

 

PROMPT:Crepuscular Old Man Corpse eater, in post apocalyptic wonderland, in heaven everything is fine by lady in the radiator and brothers quay, stop motion cinema photograph by H.R. Giger, by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Hieronymus Bosch, Art Nouveau, intricately detailed, hyperrealism, fantasy, digital art, Bogomils Universe

Poem.

 

Caledonian forest – a mature relic of an ice-scoured past,

a water-filled, thousand foot deep chasm, chiselled by the glaciers.

Now mellowed by the garb of heather, fern, gorse and woodland and interspersed increasingly with bare rock as elevation rises.

 

Islands seemingly floating, soften the image further as they cradle their remnant of the ancient glades.

So nearly joining numerous other arms of the sea as a fjord.

Blocked by a coastal rocky lip, this freshwater lake empties via a two mile, rapid-ridden river into the milky white shell-sand estuary of Morar Bay.

 

Rumours of cryptids supplement the mystique and wonder of this twelve mile stretch of water.

But detract, not one jot, from its peaceful beauty warmed by the setting sun.

 

About Dr. Takeshi Yamada:

 

Educator, medical assistant, author and artist Takeshi Yamada was born and raised at a traditional and respectable house of samurai in Osaka, Japan in 1960. He studied art at Nakanoshima College of Art in Osaka, Japan. As an international exchange student of Osaka Art University, he moved to the United States in 1983 and studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA and Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD in 1983-85, and completed his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1985.

 

Yamada obtained his Master of Fine Art Degree in 1987 at the University of Michigan, School of Art in Ann Arbor, MI. Yamada’s “Visual Anthropology Artworks” reflects unique, distinctive and often quickly disappearing culture around him. In 1987, Yamada moved to Chicago, and by 1990, Yamada successfully fused Eastern and Western visual culture and variety of cross-cultural mythology in urban allegories, and he became a major figure of the River North (“SUHU” district) art scene. During that time he also developed a provocative media persona and established his unique style of super-realism paintings furnishing ghostly images of people and optically enhanced pictorial structures. By 1990, his artworks were widely exhibited internationally. In 2000, Yamada moved to New York City.

 

Today, he is highly media-featured and internationally famed for his “rogue taxidermy” sculptures and large-scale installations, which he calls “specimens” rather than “artworks”. He also calls himself “super artist” and “gate keeper” rather than the “(self-expressing) artist“. His passion for Cabinet of Curiosities started when he was in kindergarten, collecting natural specimens and built his own Wunderkammer (German word to express “Cabinet of Curiosities“). At age eight, he started creating “rogue taxidermy monsters” such as two-headed lizards, by assembling different parts of animal carcasses.

 

Internationally, Yamada had over 600 major fine art exhibitions including 50 solo exhibitions including Spain, The Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Columbia, and the United States. Yamada also taught classes and made public speeches at over 40 educational institutions including American Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State Museum, Laurenand Rogers Museum of Art, International Museum of Surgical Science, University of Minnesota, Montana State University, Eastern Oregon University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Mount Vernon Nazarene College, Salem State College, Osaka College of Arts, Chemeketa Community College, Maryland Institute College of Art, etc. Yamada’s artworks are collection of over 30 museums and universities in addition to hundreds of corporate/private art collectors internationally. Yamada and his artworks were featured in over 400 video websites. In addition, rogue taxidermy artworks, sideshow gaffs, cryptozoological artworks, large sideshow banners and showfronts created by Yamada in the last 40 years have been exhibited at over 100 of state fairs and festivals annually nationwide, up to and including the present.

  

Yamada won numerous prestigious awards and honors i.e., “International Man of the Year”, “Outstanding Artists and Designers of the 20th Century”, “2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century”, “International Educator of the Year”, “One Thousand Great Americans”, “Outstanding People of the 20th Century”, “21st Century Award for Achievement”, “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in The World”. The Mayors of New Orleans, Louisiana and Gary, Indiana awarded him the “Key to the City”. Yamada’s artworks are collections of many museums and universities/colleges i.e., Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Chicago Athenaeum Museum, Eastern Oregon University, Montana State University and Ohio State University.

 

Yamada was profiled in numerous TV programs in the United States, Japan and Philippine, Columbia, i.e., A&E History Channel, Brooklyn Cable Access Television, “Chicago’s Very Own” in Chicago, “Takeshi Yamada’s Divine Comedy” in New Orleans, and Chicago Public Television’s Channel ID. Yamada also published 22 books based on his each major fine art projects i.e., “Homage to the Horseshoe Crab”, Medical Journal of the Artist”, “Graphic Works 1996-1999”, “Phantom City”, “Divine Comedy”, “Miniatures”, “Louisville”, “Visual Anthropology 2000”, “Heaven and Hell”, “Citizen Kings” and “Dukes and Saints” in the United States. In prints, Yamada and his artworks have been featured in numerous books, magazine and newspapers internationally i.e., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time out New York (full page color interview), Washington Times, The Fine Art Index, New American Paintings, Village Voice 9full page interview), Chicago Art Scene (front cover), Chicago Tribune Magazine (major color article), Chicago Japanese American News, Strong Coffee, Reader, Milwaukee Journal, Clarion, Kaleidoscope, Laurel Leader-Call, The Advertiser News, Times-Picayune (front page, major color articles), Michigan Alumnus (major color article), Michigan Today (major color article), Mardi Gras Guide (major color article), The Ann Arbor News (front covers), Park Slope Courier (color pages), 24/7 (color pages), Brooklyn Free Press (front cover) and The World Tribune.

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Reference (videos featuring sea rabbits and Dr. Takeshi Yamada):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ek-GsW9ay0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJK04yQUX2o&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrCCxV5S-EE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QnW26dQKg&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpVCqEjFXk0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NlcIZTFIj8&feature=fvw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UPzGvwq57g

s87.photobucket.com/albums/k130/katiecavell/NYC%2008/Coney%20Island/?action=view&current=SeaRabbitVid.mp4

www.animalnewyork.com/2012/what-are-you-doing-tonight-con...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAdsChmSR8

 

Reference (sea rabbit artifacts)

www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/06/coney-island-sea-rabbit...

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417188428/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417189548/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5416579163/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417191794/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192426/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192938/in/photostream

 

Reference (flickr):

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit15/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit14/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit13

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit12

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit11

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit10

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit9/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit8/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit7

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit6

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit5/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit4/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit2/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit1/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders3/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders2

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/

www.flickr.com/photos/takeshiyamadapaintings/

 

Reference (newspaper articles and reviews):

www.amctv.com/shows/immortalized/about

blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/immortalized-cast-photos/...

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021750...

www.villagevoice.com/2006-11-07/nyc-life/the-stuffing-dre...

karlshuker.blogspot.com/2011/06/giant-sea-serpents-and-ch...

amusingthezillion.com/2011/12/08/takeshi-yamadas-jersey-d...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/12/07/art-of-the-day-freak-tax...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/10/27/oct-29-at-coney-island-l...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/09/18/photo-of-the-day-takeshi...

amusingthezillion.com/2009/11/07/thru-dec-31-at-coney-isl...

4strange.blogspot.com/2009/02/ten-of-takeshi-yamada-colle...

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/5440224421/siz...

 

Reference (fine art websites):

www.roguetaxidermy.com/members_detail.php?id=528

www.brooklynartproject.com/photo/photo/listForContributor...

www.bsagarts.org/member-listing/takeshi-yamada/

www.horseshoecrab.org/poem/feature/takeshi.html

www.artfagcity.com/2012/09/06/recommended-go-brooklyn-stu...

 

Reference (other videos):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=otSh91iC3C4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhIR-lz1Mrs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttREu63Ksg

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

DEEP DREAM Text2Dream - Upscaler

 

This is a Upscale from a AI creation on Nightcafe, where I used my 'Trained Selfie Lora' powered by the Flux model.

 

The Prompt on Nightcafe was this:

The Artist Otto Rapp as the emperor of Austria in full holy Roman empire regalia, at the Hofburg in Vienna, painting by Albrecht Duerer, imperial Colors, surrounded by cryptid taxidermy artifacts

 

I uploaded the original Nightcafe image separately:

flic.kr/p/2qnrwq8

  

Psycho CEO @ CRYPTID EVENT 10/18. Available at mainstore after event.

 

Rigged for legacy perky reborn waifu kupra and muneca mod

 

9 tank top textures

7 shorts matte and latex

7 tie textures

4 heel textures

3 jewel textures

Rigged animated knuckle brass stiletto with stab bumper (sound & blood) legacy reborn kupra muneca

 

DEMO AVAILABLE

About Dr. Takeshi Yamada:

 

Educator, medical assistant, author and artist Takeshi Yamada was born and raised at a traditional and respectable house of samurai in Osaka, Japan in 1960. He studied art at Nakanoshima College of Art in Osaka, Japan. As an international exchange student of Osaka Art University, he moved to the United States in 1983 and studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA and Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD in 1983-85, and completed his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1985.

 

Yamada obtained his Master of Fine Art Degree in 1987 at the University of Michigan, School of Art in Ann Arbor, MI. Yamada’s “Visual Anthropology Artworks” reflects unique, distinctive and often quickly disappearing culture around him. In 1987, Yamada moved to Chicago, and by 1990, Yamada successfully fused Eastern and Western visual culture and variety of cross-cultural mythology in urban allegories, and he became a major figure of the River North (“SUHU” district) art scene. During that time he also developed a provocative media persona and established his unique style of super-realism paintings furnishing ghostly images of people and optically enhanced pictorial structures. By 1990, his artworks were widely exhibited internationally. In 2000, Yamada moved to New York City.

 

Today, he is highly media-featured and internationally famed for his “rogue taxidermy” sculptures and large-scale installations, which he calls “specimens” rather than “artworks”. He also calls himself “super artist” and “gate keeper” rather than the “(self-expressing) artist“. His passion for Cabinet of Curiosities started when he was in kindergarten, collecting natural specimens and built his own Wunderkammer (German word to express “Cabinet of Curiosities“). At age eight, he started creating “rogue taxidermy monsters” such as two-headed lizards, by assembling different parts of animal carcasses.

 

Internationally, Yamada had over 600 major fine art exhibitions including 50 solo exhibitions including Spain, The Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Columbia, and the United States. Yamada also taught classes and made public speeches at over 40 educational institutions including American Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State Museum, Laurenand Rogers Museum of Art, International Museum of Surgical Science, University of Minnesota, Montana State University, Eastern Oregon University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Mount Vernon Nazarene College, Salem State College, Osaka College of Arts, Chemeketa Community College, Maryland Institute College of Art, etc. Yamada’s artworks are collection of over 30 museums and universities in addition to hundreds of corporate/private art collectors internationally. Yamada and his artworks were featured in over 400 video websites. In addition, rogue taxidermy artworks, sideshow gaffs, cryptozoological artworks, large sideshow banners and showfronts created by Yamada in the last 40 years have been exhibited at over 100 of state fairs and festivals annually nationwide, up to and including the present.

  

Yamada won numerous prestigious awards and honors i.e., “International Man of the Year”, “Outstanding Artists and Designers of the 20th Century”, “2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century”, “International Educator of the Year”, “One Thousand Great Americans”, “Outstanding People of the 20th Century”, “21st Century Award for Achievement”, “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in The World”. The Mayors of New Orleans, Louisiana and Gary, Indiana awarded him the “Key to the City”. Yamada’s artworks are collections of many museums and universities/colleges i.e., Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Chicago Athenaeum Museum, Eastern Oregon University, Montana State University and Ohio State University.

 

Yamada was profiled in numerous TV programs in the United States, Japan and Philippine, Columbia, i.e., A&E History Channel, Brooklyn Cable Access Television, “Chicago’s Very Own” in Chicago, “Takeshi Yamada’s Divine Comedy” in New Orleans, and Chicago Public Television’s Channel ID. Yamada also published 22 books based on his each major fine art projects i.e., “Homage to the Horseshoe Crab”, Medical Journal of the Artist”, “Graphic Works 1996-1999”, “Phantom City”, “Divine Comedy”, “Miniatures”, “Louisville”, “Visual Anthropology 2000”, “Heaven and Hell”, “Citizen Kings” and “Dukes and Saints” in the United States. In prints, Yamada and his artworks have been featured in numerous books, magazine and newspapers internationally i.e., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time out New York (full page color interview), Washington Times, The Fine Art Index, New American Paintings, Village Voice 9full page interview), Chicago Art Scene (front cover), Chicago Tribune Magazine (major color article), Chicago Japanese American News, Strong Coffee, Reader, Milwaukee Journal, Clarion, Kaleidoscope, Laurel Leader-Call, The Advertiser News, Times-Picayune (front page, major color articles), Michigan Alumnus (major color article), Michigan Today (major color article), Mardi Gras Guide (major color article), The Ann Arbor News (front covers), Park Slope Courier (color pages), 24/7 (color pages), Brooklyn Free Press (front cover) and The World Tribune.

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Reference (videos featuring sea rabbits and Dr. Takeshi Yamada):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ek-GsW9ay0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJK04yQUX2o&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrCCxV5S-EE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QnW26dQKg&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpVCqEjFXk0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NlcIZTFIj8&feature=fvw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UPzGvwq57g

s87.photobucket.com/albums/k130/katiecavell/NYC%2008/Coney%20Island/?action=view&current=SeaRabbitVid.mp4

www.animalnewyork.com/2012/what-are-you-doing-tonight-con...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAdsChmSR8

 

Reference (sea rabbit artifacts)

www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/06/coney-island-sea-rabbit...

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417188428/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417189548/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5416579163/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417191794/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192426/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192938/in/photostream

 

Reference (flickr):

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit15/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit14/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit13

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit12

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit11

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit10

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit9/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit8/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit7

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit6

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit5/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit4/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit2/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit1/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders3/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders2

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/

www.flickr.com/photos/takeshiyamadapaintings/

 

Reference (newspaper articles and reviews):

www.amctv.com/shows/immortalized/about

blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/immortalized-cast-photos/...

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021750...

www.villagevoice.com/2006-11-07/nyc-life/the-stuffing-dre...

karlshuker.blogspot.com/2011/06/giant-sea-serpents-and-ch...

amusingthezillion.com/2011/12/08/takeshi-yamadas-jersey-d...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/12/07/art-of-the-day-freak-tax...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/10/27/oct-29-at-coney-island-l...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/09/18/photo-of-the-day-takeshi...

amusingthezillion.com/2009/11/07/thru-dec-31-at-coney-isl...

4strange.blogspot.com/2009/02/ten-of-takeshi-yamada-colle...

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/5440224421/siz...

 

Reference (fine art websites):

www.roguetaxidermy.com/members_detail.php?id=528

www.brooklynartproject.com/photo/photo/listForContributor...

www.bsagarts.org/member-listing/takeshi-yamada/

www.horseshoecrab.org/poem/feature/takeshi.html

www.artfagcity.com/2012/09/06/recommended-go-brooklyn-stu...

 

Reference (other videos):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=otSh91iC3C4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhIR-lz1Mrs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttREu63Ksg

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

another sooc cryptic light painting :) tonight's offering is the Swiss tatzelwurm :o

Loch Ness is a large freshwater loch in the Scottish Highlands extending for approximately 37 kilometres (23 miles) southwest of Inverness. It takes its name from the River Ness, which flows from the northern end. Loch Ness is best known for alleged sightings of the cryptozoological Loch Ness Monster, also known affectionately as "Nessie" (Scottish Gaelic: Niseag). It is one of a series of interconnected, murky bodies of water in Scotland; its water visibility is exceptionally low due to a high peat content in the surrounding soil. The southern end connects to Loch Oich by the River Oich and a section of the Caledonian Canal. The northern end connects to Loch Dochfour via the River Ness, which then ultimately leads to the North Sea via the Moray Firth.

 

Loch Ness is the second-largest Scottish loch by surface area after Loch Lomond at 56 km2 (22 sq mi), but due to its great depth it is the largest by volume in the British Isles. Its deepest point is 230 metres (126 fathoms; 755 feet), making it the second deepest loch in Scotland after Loch Morar. It contains more water than all the lakes in England and Wales combined, and is the largest body of water in the Great Glen, which runs from Inverness in the north to Fort William in the south. Its surface is 16 metres (52 feet) above sea level. It contains a single, artificial island named Cherry Island (Scottish Gaelic: Eilean Muireach) at the southwestern end. There are nine villages around the loch, as well as Urquhart Castle; the village of Drumnadrochit contains a "Loch Ness Centre and Exhibition".

 

Loch Ness is an elongated freshwater loch in the Scottish Highlands southwest of Inverness, extending for approximately 37 kilometres (23 miles) and flowing from southwest to northeast. At 56 km2 (22 sq mi), it is the second-largest Scottish loch by surface area after Loch Lomond, but due to its great depth it is the largest by volume in the British Isles. Its deepest point is 230 metres (126 fathoms; 755 feet), making it the second deepest loch in Scotland after Loch Morar. A 2016 survey claimed to have discovered a crevice extending to a depth of 271 m (889 ft), but further research determined this to be a sonar anomaly. Its surface is 16 metres (52 feet) above sea level. It contains more water than all the lakes in England and Wales combined, and is the largest body of water in the Great Glen, which runs from Inverness in the north to Fort William in the south. Loch Ness lies along the Great Glen Fault, which forms a line of weakness in the rocks which has been excavated by glacial erosion, forming the Great Glen and the basins of Loch Lochy, Loch Oich and Loch Ness.

 

Loch Ness has one small island, Cherry Island (Scottish Gaelic: Eilean Muireach, meaning Murdoch's Island), at the southwestern end of the loch. It is an artificial island, known as a crannog, and was likely constructed during the Iron Age. The island was originally 160 feet (49 m) by 168 feet (51 m) across, but is now smaller as the water level was raised during the construction of the Caledonian Canal in the early nineteenth century. There was formerly a second, natural island nearby named Dog Island (Scottish Gaelic: Eilean Nan Con), but it was submerged when the water level rose. A castle stood on Cherry Island during the 15th century; this was constructed of stone and oak wood and was likely used as a fortified refuge. It has been suggested that Eilean Muireach may have been a hunting lodge, with Eilean Nan Con the home for the hunting dogs.

 

The loch is one of a series of interconnected, murky bodies of water in Scotland; its water visibility is exceptionally low due to a high peat content in the surrounding soil. The southern end is fed by the River Oich, which runs from Loch Oich. The northern end flows out through the Bona Narrows into Loch Dochfour; the Bathymetrical survey of the Scottish fresh-water lochs considered Loch Dochfour to be distinct from Loch Ness proper, but capable of being regarded as forming part of Loch Ness. Dochgarroch weir at the downstream end of Loch Dochfour delineates the start of the River Ness, which connects to the nearby and ultimately leads through Inverness to the North Sea via the Moray Firth. Loch Ness forms part of the Caledonian Canal, which comprises 60 miles (100 kilometres) of waterways connecting the east coast of Scotland at Inverness with the west coast at Corpachthe near Fort William. Only one-third of the entire length is man-made, the rest being formed by Loch Dochfour, Loch Ness, Loch Oich, and Loch Lochy, with the man-made canals running parallel with rivers such as the River Oich.

 

Loch Ness is known as the home of the Loch Ness Monster (also known as "Nessie"), a cryptid, reputedly a large unknown animal. It is similar to other supposed lake monsters in Scotland and elsewhere, though its description varies from one account to the next. Popular interest and belief in the animal's existence have varied since it was first brought to the world's attention in 1933.

 

The Highlands is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.

 

The area is very sparsely populated, with many mountain ranges dominating the region, and includes the highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis. During the 18th and early 19th centuries the population of the Highlands rose to around 300,000, but from c. 1841 and for the next 160 years, the natural increase in population was exceeded by emigration (mostly to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and migration to the industrial cities of Scotland and England.) and passim  The area is now one of the most sparsely populated in Europe. At 9.1/km2 (24/sq mi) in 2012, the population density in the Highlands and Islands is less than one seventh of Scotland's as a whole.

 

The Highland Council is the administrative body for much of the Highlands, with its administrative centre at Inverness. However, the Highlands also includes parts of the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Moray, North Ayrshire, Perth and Kinross, Stirling and West Dunbartonshire.

 

The Scottish Highlands is the only area in the British Isles to have the taiga biome as it features concentrated populations of Scots pine forest: see Caledonian Forest. It is the most mountainous part of the United Kingdom.

 

Between the 15th century and the mid-20th century, the area differed from most of the Lowlands in terms of language. In Scottish Gaelic, the region is known as the Gàidhealtachd, because it was traditionally the Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland, although the language is now largely confined to The Hebrides. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably but have different meanings in their respective languages. Scottish English (in its Highland form) is the predominant language of the area today, though Highland English has been influenced by Gaelic speech to a significant extent. Historically, the "Highland line" distinguished the two Scottish cultures. While the Highland line broadly followed the geography of the Grampians in the south, it continued in the north, cutting off the north-eastern areas, that is Eastern Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, from the more Gaelic Highlands and Hebrides.

 

Historically, the major social unit of the Highlands was the clan. Scottish kings, particularly James VI, saw clans as a challenge to their authority; the Highlands was seen by many as a lawless region. The Scots of the Lowlands viewed the Highlanders as backward and more "Irish". The Highlands were seen as the overspill of Gaelic Ireland. They made this distinction by separating Germanic "Scots" English and the Gaelic by renaming it "Erse" a play on Eire. Following the Union of the Crowns, James VI had the military strength to back up any attempts to impose some control. The result was, in 1609, the Statutes of Iona which started the process of integrating clan leaders into Scottish society. The gradual changes continued into the 19th century, as clan chiefs thought of themselves less as patriarchal leaders of their people and more as commercial landlords. The first effect on the clansmen who were their tenants was the change to rents being payable in money rather than in kind. Later, rents were increased as Highland landowners sought to increase their income. This was followed, mostly in the period 1760–1850, by agricultural improvement that often (particularly in the Western Highlands) involved clearance of the population to make way for large scale sheep farms. Displaced tenants were set up in crofting communities in the process. The crofts were intended not to provide all the needs of their occupiers; they were expected to work in other industries such as kelping and fishing. Crofters came to rely substantially on seasonal migrant work, particularly in the Lowlands. This gave impetus to the learning of English, which was seen by many rural Gaelic speakers to be the essential "language of work".

 

Older historiography attributes the collapse of the clan system to the aftermath of the Jacobite risings. This is now thought less influential by historians. Following the Jacobite rising of 1745 the British government enacted a series of laws to try to suppress the clan system, including bans on the bearing of arms and the wearing of tartan, and limitations on the activities of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Most of this legislation was repealed by the end of the 18th century as the Jacobite threat subsided. There was soon a rehabilitation of Highland culture. Tartan was adopted for Highland regiments in the British Army, which poor Highlanders joined in large numbers in the era of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1790–1815). Tartan had largely been abandoned by the ordinary people of the region, but in the 1820s, tartan and the kilt were adopted by members of the social elite, not just in Scotland, but across Europe. The international craze for tartan, and for idealising a romanticised Highlands, was set off by the Ossian cycle, and further popularised by the works of Walter Scott. His "staging" of the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 and the king's wearing of tartan resulted in a massive upsurge in demand for kilts and tartans that could not be met by the Scottish woollen industry. Individual clan tartans were largely designated in this period and they became a major symbol of Scottish identity. This "Highlandism", by which all of Scotland was identified with the culture of the Highlands, was cemented by Queen Victoria's interest in the country, her adoption of Balmoral as a major royal retreat, and her interest in "tartenry".

 

Recurrent famine affected the Highlands for much of its history, with significant instances as late as 1817 in the Eastern Highlands and the early 1850s in the West.  Over the 18th century, the region had developed a trade of black cattle into Lowland markets, and this was balanced by imports of meal into the area. There was a critical reliance on this trade to provide sufficient food, and it is seen as an essential prerequisite for the population growth that started in the 18th century. Most of the Highlands, particularly in the North and West was short of the arable land that was essential for the mixed, run rig based, communal farming that existed before agricultural improvement was introduced into the region.[a] Between the 1760s and the 1830s there was a substantial trade in unlicensed whisky that had been distilled in the Highlands. Lowland distillers (who were not able to avoid the heavy taxation of this product) complained that Highland whisky made up more than half the market. The development of the cattle trade is taken as evidence that the pre-improvement Highlands was not an immutable system, but did exploit the economic opportunities that came its way.  The illicit whisky trade demonstrates the entrepreneurial ability of the peasant classes. 

 

Agricultural improvement reached the Highlands mostly over the period 1760 to 1850. Agricultural advisors, factors, land surveyors and others educated in the thinking of Adam Smith were keen to put into practice the new ideas taught in Scottish universities.  Highland landowners, many of whom were burdened with chronic debts, were generally receptive to the advice they offered and keen to increase the income from their land.  In the East and South the resulting change was similar to that in the Lowlands, with the creation of larger farms with single tenants, enclosure of the old run rig fields, introduction of new crops (such as turnips), land drainage and, as a consequence of all this, eviction, as part of the Highland clearances, of many tenants and cottars. Some of those cleared found employment on the new, larger farms, others moved to the accessible towns of the Lowlands.

 

In the West and North, evicted tenants were usually given tenancies in newly created crofting communities, while their former holdings were converted into large sheep farms. Sheep farmers could pay substantially higher rents than the run rig farmers and were much less prone to falling into arrears. Each croft was limited in size so that the tenants would have to find work elsewhere. The major alternatives were fishing and the kelp industry. Landlords took control of the kelp shores, deducting the wages earned by their tenants from the rent due and retaining the large profits that could be earned at the high prices paid for the processed product during the Napoleonic wars.

 

When the Napoleonic wars finished in 1815, the Highland industries were affected by the return to a peacetime economy. The price of black cattle fell, nearly halving between 1810 and the 1830s. Kelp prices had peaked in 1810, but reduced from £9 a ton in 1823 to £3 13s 4d a ton in 1828. Wool prices were also badly affected.  This worsened the financial problems of debt-encumbered landlords. Then, in 1846, potato blight arrived in the Highlands, wiping out the essential subsistence crop for the overcrowded crofting communities. As the famine struck, the government made clear to landlords that it was their responsibility to provide famine relief for their tenants. The result of the economic downturn had been that a large proportion of Highland estates were sold in the first half of the 19th century. T M Devine points out that in the region most affected by the potato famine, by 1846, 70 per cent of the landowners were new purchasers who had not owned Highland property before 1800. More landlords were obliged to sell due to the cost of famine relief. Those who were protected from the worst of the crisis were those with extensive rental income from sheep farms.  Government loans were made available for drainage works, road building and other improvements and many crofters became temporary migrants – taking work in the Lowlands. When the potato famine ceased in 1856, this established a pattern of more extensive working away from the Highlands.

 

The unequal concentration of land ownership remained an emotional and controversial subject, of enormous importance to the Highland economy, and eventually became a cornerstone of liberal radicalism. The poor crofters were politically powerless, and many of them turned to religion. They embraced the popularly oriented, fervently evangelical Presbyterian revival after 1800. Most joined the breakaway "Free Church" after 1843. This evangelical movement was led by lay preachers who themselves came from the lower strata, and whose preaching was implicitly critical of the established order. The religious change energised the crofters and separated them from the landlords; it helped prepare them for their successful and violent challenge to the landlords in the 1880s through the Highland Land League. Violence erupted, starting on the Isle of Skye, when Highland landlords cleared their lands for sheep and deer parks. It was quietened when the government stepped in, passing the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1886 to reduce rents, guarantee fixity of tenure, and break up large estates to provide crofts for the homeless. This contrasted with the Irish Land War underway at the same time, where the Irish were intensely politicised through roots in Irish nationalism, while political dimensions were limited. In 1885 three Independent Crofter candidates were elected to Parliament, which listened to their pleas. The results included explicit security for the Scottish smallholders in the "crofting counties"; the legal right to bequeath tenancies to descendants; and the creation of a Crofting Commission. The Crofters as a political movement faded away by 1892, and the Liberal Party gained their votes.

 

Today, the Highlands are the largest of Scotland's whisky producing regions; the relevant area runs from Orkney to the Isle of Arran in the south and includes the northern isles and much of Inner and Outer Hebrides, Argyll, Stirlingshire, Arran, as well as sections of Perthshire and Aberdeenshire. (Other sources treat The Islands, except Islay, as a separate whisky producing region.) This massive area has over 30 distilleries, or 47 when the Islands sub-region is included in the count. According to one source, the top five are The Macallan, Glenfiddich, Aberlour, Glenfarclas and Balvenie. While Speyside is geographically within the Highlands, that region is specified as distinct in terms of whisky productions. Speyside single malt whiskies are produced by about 50 distilleries.

 

According to Visit Scotland, Highlands whisky is "fruity, sweet, spicy, malty". Another review states that Northern Highlands single malt is "sweet and full-bodied", the Eastern Highlands and Southern Highlands whiskies tend to be "lighter in texture" while the distilleries in the Western Highlands produce single malts with a "much peatier influence".

 

The Scottish Reformation achieved partial success in the Highlands. Roman Catholicism remained strong in some areas, owing to remote locations and the efforts of Franciscan missionaries from Ireland, who regularly came to celebrate Mass. There remain significant Catholic strongholds within the Highlands and Islands such as Moidart and Morar on the mainland and South Uist and Barra in the southern Outer Hebrides. The remoteness of the region and the lack of a Gaelic-speaking clergy undermined the missionary efforts of the established church. The later 18th century saw somewhat greater success, owing to the efforts of the SSPCK missionaries and to the disruption of traditional society after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. In the 19th century, the evangelical Free Churches, which were more accepting of Gaelic language and culture, grew rapidly, appealing much more strongly than did the established church.

 

For the most part, however, the Highlands are considered predominantly Protestant, belonging to the Church of Scotland. In contrast to the Catholic southern islands, the northern Outer Hebrides islands (Lewis, Harris and North Uist) have an exceptionally high proportion of their population belonging to the Protestant Free Church of Scotland or the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The Outer Hebrides have been described as the last bastion of Calvinism in Britain and the Sabbath remains widely observed. Inverness and the surrounding area has a majority Protestant population, with most locals belonging to either The Kirk or the Free Church of Scotland. The church maintains a noticeable presence within the area, with church attendance notably higher than in other parts of Scotland. Religion continues to play an important role in Highland culture, with Sabbath observance still widely practised, particularly in the Hebrides.

 

In traditional Scottish geography, the Highlands refers to that part of Scotland north-west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which crosses mainland Scotland in a near-straight line from Helensburgh to Stonehaven. However the flat coastal lands that occupy parts of the counties of Nairnshire, Morayshire, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire are often excluded as they do not share the distinctive geographical and cultural features of the rest of the Highlands. The north-east of Caithness, as well as Orkney and Shetland, are also often excluded from the Highlands, although the Hebrides are usually included. The Highland area, as so defined, differed from the Lowlands in language and tradition, having preserved Gaelic speech and customs centuries after the anglicisation of the latter; this led to a growing perception of a divide, with the cultural distinction between Highlander and Lowlander first noted towards the end of the 14th century. In Aberdeenshire, the boundary between the Highlands and the Lowlands is not well defined. There is a stone beside the A93 road near the village of Dinnet on Royal Deeside which states 'You are now in the Highlands', although there are areas of Highland character to the east of this point.

 

A much wider definition of the Highlands is that used by the Scotch whisky industry. Highland single malts are produced at distilleries north of an imaginary line between Dundee and Greenock, thus including all of Aberdeenshire and Angus.

 

Inverness is regarded as the Capital of the Highlands, although less so in the Highland parts of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perthshire and Stirlingshire which look more to Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and Stirling as their commercial centres.

 

The Highland Council area, created as one of the local government regions of Scotland, has been a unitary council area since 1996. The council area excludes a large area of the southern and eastern Highlands, and the Western Isles, but includes Caithness. Highlands is sometimes used, however, as a name for the council area, as in the former Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern is also used to refer to the area, as in the former Northern Constabulary. These former bodies both covered the Highland council area and the island council areas of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.

 

Much of the Highlands area overlaps the Highlands and Islands area. An electoral region called Highlands and Islands is used in elections to the Scottish Parliament: this area includes Orkney and Shetland, as well as the Highland Council local government area, the Western Isles and most of the Argyll and Bute and Moray local government areas. Highlands and Islands has, however, different meanings in different contexts. It means Highland (the local government area), Orkney, Shetland, and the Western Isles in Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern, as in Northern Constabulary, refers to the same area as that covered by the fire and rescue service.

 

There have been trackways from the Lowlands to the Highlands since prehistoric times. Many traverse the Mounth, a spur of mountainous land that extends from the higher inland range to the North Sea slightly north of Stonehaven. The most well-known and historically important trackways are the Causey Mounth, Elsick Mounth, Cryne Corse Mounth and Cairnamounth.

 

Although most of the Highlands is geographically on the British mainland, it is somewhat less accessible than the rest of Britain; thus most UK couriers categorise it separately, alongside Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and other offshore islands. They thus charge additional fees for delivery to the Highlands, or exclude the area entirely. While the physical remoteness from the largest population centres inevitably leads to higher transit cost, there is confusion and consternation over the scale of the fees charged and the effectiveness of their communication, and the use of the word Mainland in their justification. Since the charges are often based on postcode areas, many far less remote areas, including some which are traditionally considered part of the lowlands, are also subject to these charges. Royal Mail is the only delivery network bound by a Universal Service Obligation to charge a uniform tariff across the UK. This, however, applies only to mail items and not larger packages which are dealt with by its Parcelforce division.

 

The Highlands lie to the north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which runs from Arran to Stonehaven. This part of Scotland is largely composed of ancient rocks from the Cambrian and Precambrian periods which were uplifted during the later Caledonian Orogeny. Smaller formations of Lewisian gneiss in the northwest are up to 3 billion years old. The overlying rocks of the Torridon Sandstone form mountains in the Torridon Hills such as Liathach and Beinn Eighe in Wester Ross.

 

These foundations are interspersed with many igneous intrusions of a more recent age, the remnants of which have formed mountain massifs such as the Cairngorms and the Cuillin of Skye. A significant exception to the above are the fossil-bearing beds of Old Red Sandstone found principally along the Moray Firth coast and partially down the Highland Boundary Fault. The Jurassic beds found in isolated locations on Skye and Applecross reflect the complex underlying geology. They are the original source of much North Sea oil. The Great Glen is formed along a transform fault which divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands.

 

The entire region was covered by ice sheets during the Pleistocene ice ages, save perhaps for a few nunataks. The complex geomorphology includes incised valleys and lochs carved by the action of mountain streams and ice, and a topography of irregularly distributed mountains whose summits have similar heights above sea-level, but whose bases depend upon the amount of denudation to which the plateau has been subjected in various places.

Climate

 

The region is much warmer than other areas at similar latitudes (such as Kamchatka in Russia, or Labrador in Canada) because of the Gulf Stream making it cool, damp and temperate. The Köppen climate classification is "Cfb" at low altitudes, then becoming "Cfc", "Dfc" and "ET" at higher altitudes.

 

Places of interest

An Teallach

Aonach Mòr (Nevis Range ski centre)

Arrochar Alps

Balmoral Castle

Balquhidder

Battlefield of Culloden

Beinn Alligin

Beinn Eighe

Ben Cruachan hydro-electric power station

Ben Lomond

Ben Macdui (second highest mountain in Scotland and UK)

Ben Nevis (highest mountain in Scotland and UK)

Cairngorms National Park

Cairngorm Ski centre near Aviemore

Cairngorm Mountains

Caledonian Canal

Cape Wrath

Carrick Castle

Castle Stalker

Castle Tioram

Chanonry Point

Conic Hill

Culloden Moor

Dunadd

Duart Castle

Durness

Eilean Donan

Fingal's Cave (Staffa)

Fort George

Glen Coe

Glen Etive

Glen Kinglas

Glen Lyon

Glen Orchy

Glenshee Ski Centre

Glen Shiel

Glen Spean

Glenfinnan (and its railway station and viaduct)

Grampian Mountains

Hebrides

Highland Folk Museum – The first open-air museum in the UK.

Highland Wildlife Park

Inveraray Castle

Inveraray Jail

Inverness Castle

Inverewe Garden

Iona Abbey

Isle of Staffa

Kilchurn Castle

Kilmartin Glen

Liathach

Lecht Ski Centre

Loch Alsh

Loch Ard

Loch Awe

Loch Assynt

Loch Earn

Loch Etive

Loch Fyne

Loch Goil

Loch Katrine

Loch Leven

Loch Linnhe

Loch Lochy

Loch Lomond

Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park

Loch Lubnaig

Loch Maree

Loch Morar

Loch Morlich

Loch Ness

Loch Nevis

Loch Rannoch

Loch Tay

Lochranza

Luss

Meall a' Bhuiridh (Glencoe Ski Centre)

Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary at Loch Creran

Rannoch Moor

Red Cuillin

Rest and Be Thankful stretch of A83

River Carron, Wester Ross

River Spey

River Tay

Ross and Cromarty

Smoo Cave

Stob Coire a' Chàirn

Stac Polly

Strathspey Railway

Sutherland

Tor Castle

Torridon Hills

Urquhart Castle

West Highland Line (scenic railway)

West Highland Way (Long-distance footpath)

Wester Ross

AI creation on Dreamwombo

Graffiti v3

  

PROMPT:

"impending doom, cryptid taxidermy reptilian conspiracy at the vatican in bogomil's universe, insanely surreal, hieronymus bosch, h r giger, hyperreal, dynamic lighting, breathe taking colours, imperial colours, oil painting, cryptid taxidermy in bogomil's universe."

 

created in NIGHTCAFE - Stable Diffusion SDXL 1.0

the prompt included Giger, Varo and Mucha

 

Trying various ways with my (text only) prompt to get the right balance between 'same old' and innovative surreal fantasy.

 

PROMPT:

"A Magnificient Winged Centaur, half Human half Horse" stands front and center in a wonderland landscape, painting by H.R. Giger, Remedios Varo and Alphonse Mucha, Art Nouveau, intricately detailed, hyperrealism, fantasy, imperial colors; Bogomils Universe of the Mystic Otto Rapp

  

The Saddle-billed Stork (Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis) is a large wading bird in the stork family, Ciconiidae.

 

It is a widespread species which is a resident breeder in sub-Saharan Africa from Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya south to South Africa, and in The Gambia, Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Chad in west Africa.

 

This is a close relative of the widespread Asian Black-necked Stork, the only other member of the genus Ephippiorhynchus.

 

Characteristics

 

The Saddle-billed Stork breeds in forested waterlands and other floodlands in tropical lowland. It builds a large, deep stick nest in a tree, laying one or two white eggs weighing about 146g each. It does not form breeding colonies, and is usually found alone or in pairs. The incubation period is 30-35 days, with another 70 - 100 days before the chicks fledge.

 

This is a huge bird that regularly attains a height of 150 cm (5 feet) and a 270cm (9 feet) wingspan. The male is larger and heavier than the female, with a range of 5.1-7.5 kg, the female is usually between 5 and 6.9 kg. It is probably the tallest, if not the heaviest, of the storks.

 

Females are distinctly smaller than the males. It is spectacularly plumaged. The head, neck, back, wings, and tail are iridescent black, with the rest of the body and the primary flight feathers being white. The massive bill is red with a black band and a yellow frontal shield (the “saddle”). The legs and feet are black with pink knees.

 

Sexes are identically plumaged except that the female has a golden yellow iris, while the male's is brown. Juveniles are browner grey in plumage.

 

Saddle-billed Stork with crab lunch

 

They are silent except for bill-clattering at the nest.

 

Like most storks, these fly with the neck outstretched, not retracted like a heron; in flight, the large heavy bill is kept drooping somewhat below belly height, giving these birds a very unusual appearance to those who see them for the first time. To experienced birdwatchers on the other hand, this makes them easily recognizable even if seen from a distance. It has been suggested that due to the large size and unusual appearance in flight, this species is the basis for the "Big Bird" and Kongamato cryptids.

  

Diet / Feeding

 

The Saddle-billed Stork, like most of its relatives, feeds mainly on fish, frogs and crabs, but also on small birds and small reptiles. They move in a deliberate and stately manner as they hunt, in a similar way to the larger herons.

  

Relation to Ancient Egyptian culture

 

This bird is represented in an Ancient Egyptian hieroglyph (Gardiner G29) that had the phonetic value "ba":

 

Its description is often erroneously given as "jabiru", which is actually this species' Latin American relative. The Third Dynasty pharaoh Khaba incorporated this hieroglyph in his name (Jiménez Serrano 2002).

  

Saddle-billed StorkReferences

 

Barlow, Clive (1997): A field guide to birds of the Gambia and Senegal. Pica Press, Nr. Robertsbridge (East Sussex). ISBN 1-873403-32-1

 

BirdLife International (2008). Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis. In: IUCN 2008. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Downloaded on 3 February 2009. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern.

 

Jiménez Serrano, Alejandro (2002): Royal Festivals in the Late Predynastic Period and the First Dynasty. British Archaeological Reports (International Series) 1076. ISBN 1-84171-455-0

About Dr. Takeshi Yamada:

 

Educator, medical assistant, author and artist Takeshi Yamada was born and raised at a traditional and respectable house of samurai in Osaka, Japan in 1960. He studied art at Nakanoshima College of Art in Osaka, Japan. As an international exchange student of Osaka Art University, he moved to the United States in 1983 and studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA and Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD in 1983-85, and completed his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1985.

 

Yamada obtained his Master of Fine Art Degree in 1987 at the University of Michigan, School of Art in Ann Arbor, MI. Yamada’s “Visual Anthropology Artworks” reflects unique, distinctive and often quickly disappearing culture around him. In 1987, Yamada moved to Chicago, and by 1990, Yamada successfully fused Eastern and Western visual culture and variety of cross-cultural mythology in urban allegories, and he became a major figure of the River North (“SUHU” district) art scene. During that time he also developed a provocative media persona and established his unique style of super-realism paintings furnishing ghostly images of people and optically enhanced pictorial structures. By 1990, his artworks were widely exhibited internationally. In 2000, Yamada moved to New York City.

 

Today, he is highly media-featured and internationally famed for his “rogue taxidermy” sculptures and large-scale installations, which he calls “specimens” rather than “artworks”. He also calls himself “super artist” and “gate keeper” rather than the “(self-expressing) artist“. His passion for Cabinet of Curiosities started when he was in kindergarten, collecting natural specimens and built his own Wunderkammer (German word to express “Cabinet of Curiosities“). At age eight, he started creating “rogue taxidermy monsters” such as two-headed lizards, by assembling different parts of animal carcasses.

 

Internationally, Yamada had over 600 major fine art exhibitions including 50 solo exhibitions including Spain, The Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Columbia, and the United States. Yamada also taught classes and made public speeches at over 40 educational institutions including American Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State Museum, Laurenand Rogers Museum of Art, International Museum of Surgical Science, University of Minnesota, Montana State University, Eastern Oregon University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Mount Vernon Nazarene College, Salem State College, Osaka College of Arts, Chemeketa Community College, Maryland Institute College of Art, etc. Yamada’s artworks are collection of over 30 museums and universities in addition to hundreds of corporate/private art collectors internationally. Yamada and his artworks were featured in over 400 video websites. In addition, rogue taxidermy artworks, sideshow gaffs, cryptozoological artworks, large sideshow banners and showfronts created by Yamada in the last 40 years have been exhibited at over 100 of state fairs and festivals annually nationwide, up to and including the present.

  

Yamada won numerous prestigious awards and honors i.e., “International Man of the Year”, “Outstanding Artists and Designers of the 20th Century”, “2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century”, “International Educator of the Year”, “One Thousand Great Americans”, “Outstanding People of the 20th Century”, “21st Century Award for Achievement”, “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in The World”. The Mayors of New Orleans, Louisiana and Gary, Indiana awarded him the “Key to the City”. Yamada’s artworks are collections of many museums and universities/colleges i.e., Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Chicago Athenaeum Museum, Eastern Oregon University, Montana State University and Ohio State University.

 

Yamada was profiled in numerous TV programs in the United States, Japan and Philippine, Columbia, i.e., A&E History Channel, Brooklyn Cable Access Television, “Chicago’s Very Own” in Chicago, “Takeshi Yamada’s Divine Comedy” in New Orleans, and Chicago Public Television’s Channel ID. Yamada also published 22 books based on his each major fine art projects i.e., “Homage to the Horseshoe Crab”, Medical Journal of the Artist”, “Graphic Works 1996-1999”, “Phantom City”, “Divine Comedy”, “Miniatures”, “Louisville”, “Visual Anthropology 2000”, “Heaven and Hell”, “Citizen Kings” and “Dukes and Saints” in the United States. In prints, Yamada and his artworks have been featured in numerous books, magazine and newspapers internationally i.e., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time out New York (full page color interview), Washington Times, The Fine Art Index, New American Paintings, Village Voice 9full page interview), Chicago Art Scene (front cover), Chicago Tribune Magazine (major color article), Chicago Japanese American News, Strong Coffee, Reader, Milwaukee Journal, Clarion, Kaleidoscope, Laurel Leader-Call, The Advertiser News, Times-Picayune (front page, major color articles), Michigan Alumnus (major color article), Michigan Today (major color article), Mardi Gras Guide (major color article), The Ann Arbor News (front covers), Park Slope Courier (color pages), 24/7 (color pages), Brooklyn Free Press (front cover) and The World Tribune.

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Reference (videos featuring sea rabbits and Dr. Takeshi Yamada):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ek-GsW9ay0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJK04yQUX2o&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrCCxV5S-EE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QnW26dQKg&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpVCqEjFXk0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NlcIZTFIj8&feature=fvw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UPzGvwq57g

s87.photobucket.com/albums/k130/katiecavell/NYC%2008/Coney%20Island/?action=view&current=SeaRabbitVid.mp4

www.animalnewyork.com/2012/what-are-you-doing-tonight-con...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAdsChmSR8

 

Reference (sea rabbit artifacts)

www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/06/coney-island-sea-rabbit...

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417188428/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417189548/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5416579163/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417191794/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192426/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192938/in/photostream

 

Reference (flickr):

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit15/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit14/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit13

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit12

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit11

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit10

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit9/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit8/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit7

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit6

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit5/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit4/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit2/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit1/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders3/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders2

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/

www.flickr.com/photos/takeshiyamadapaintings/

 

Reference (newspaper articles and reviews):

www.amctv.com/shows/immortalized/about

blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/immortalized-cast-photos/...

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021750...

www.villagevoice.com/2006-11-07/nyc-life/the-stuffing-dre...

karlshuker.blogspot.com/2011/06/giant-sea-serpents-and-ch...

amusingthezillion.com/2011/12/08/takeshi-yamadas-jersey-d...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/12/07/art-of-the-day-freak-tax...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/10/27/oct-29-at-coney-island-l...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/09/18/photo-of-the-day-takeshi...

amusingthezillion.com/2009/11/07/thru-dec-31-at-coney-isl...

4strange.blogspot.com/2009/02/ten-of-takeshi-yamada-colle...

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/5440224421/siz...

 

Reference (fine art websites):

www.roguetaxidermy.com/members_detail.php?id=528

www.brooklynartproject.com/photo/photo/listForContributor...

www.bsagarts.org/member-listing/takeshi-yamada/

www.horseshoecrab.org/poem/feature/takeshi.html

www.artfagcity.com/2012/09/06/recommended-go-brooklyn-stu...

 

Reference (other videos):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=otSh91iC3C4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhIR-lz1Mrs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttREu63Ksg

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Chupacabra creature feeding on its prey, done for the "Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology" MA art project.

 

check it out here: www.behance.net/gallery/Illustrated-Encyclopedia-of-Crypt...

 

Thanks!

About Dr. Takeshi Yamada:

 

Educator, medical assistant, author and artist Takeshi Yamada was born and raised at a traditional and respectable house of samurai in Osaka, Japan in 1960. He studied art at Nakanoshima College of Art in Osaka, Japan. As an international exchange student of Osaka Art University, he moved to the United States in 1983 and studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA and Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD in 1983-85, and completed his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1985.

 

Yamada obtained his Master of Fine Art Degree in 1987 at the University of Michigan, School of Art in Ann Arbor, MI. Yamada’s “Visual Anthropology Artworks” reflects unique, distinctive and often quickly disappearing culture around him. In 1987, Yamada moved to Chicago, and by 1990, Yamada successfully fused Eastern and Western visual culture and variety of cross-cultural mythology in urban allegories, and he became a major figure of the River North (“SUHU” district) art scene. During that time he also developed a provocative media persona and established his unique style of super-realism paintings furnishing ghostly images of people and optically enhanced pictorial structures. By 1990, his artworks were widely exhibited internationally. In 2000, Yamada moved to New York City.

 

Today, he is highly media-featured and internationally famed for his “rogue taxidermy” sculptures and large-scale installations, which he calls “specimens” rather than “artworks”. He also calls himself “super artist” and “gate keeper” rather than the “(self-expressing) artist“. His passion for Cabinet of Curiosities started when he was in kindergarten, collecting natural specimens and built his own Wunderkammer (German word to express “Cabinet of Curiosities“). At age eight, he started creating “rogue taxidermy monsters” such as two-headed lizards, by assembling different parts of animal carcasses.

 

Internationally, Yamada had over 600 major fine art exhibitions including 50 solo exhibitions including Spain, The Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Columbia, and the United States. Yamada also taught classes and made public speeches at over 40 educational institutions including American Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State Museum, Laurenand Rogers Museum of Art, International Museum of Surgical Science, University of Minnesota, Montana State University, Eastern Oregon University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Mount Vernon Nazarene College, Salem State College, Osaka College of Arts, Chemeketa Community College, Maryland Institute College of Art, etc. Yamada’s artworks are collection of over 30 museums and universities in addition to hundreds of corporate/private art collectors internationally. Yamada and his artworks were featured in over 400 video websites. In addition, rogue taxidermy artworks, sideshow gaffs, cryptozoological artworks, large sideshow banners and showfronts created by Yamada in the last 40 years have been exhibited at over 100 of state fairs and festivals annually nationwide, up to and including the present.

  

Yamada won numerous prestigious awards and honors i.e., “International Man of the Year”, “Outstanding Artists and Designers of the 20th Century”, “2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century”, “International Educator of the Year”, “One Thousand Great Americans”, “Outstanding People of the 20th Century”, “21st Century Award for Achievement”, “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in The World”. The Mayors of New Orleans, Louisiana and Gary, Indiana awarded him the “Key to the City”. Yamada’s artworks are collections of many museums and universities/colleges i.e., Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Chicago Athenaeum Museum, Eastern Oregon University, Montana State University and Ohio State University.

 

Yamada was profiled in numerous TV programs in the United States, Japan and Philippine, Columbia, i.e., A&E History Channel, Brooklyn Cable Access Television, “Chicago’s Very Own” in Chicago, “Takeshi Yamada’s Divine Comedy” in New Orleans, and Chicago Public Television’s Channel ID. Yamada also published 22 books based on his each major fine art projects i.e., “Homage to the Horseshoe Crab”, Medical Journal of the Artist”, “Graphic Works 1996-1999”, “Phantom City”, “Divine Comedy”, “Miniatures”, “Louisville”, “Visual Anthropology 2000”, “Heaven and Hell”, “Citizen Kings” and “Dukes and Saints” in the United States. In prints, Yamada and his artworks have been featured in numerous books, magazine and newspapers internationally i.e., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time out New York (full page color interview), Washington Times, The Fine Art Index, New American Paintings, Village Voice 9full page interview), Chicago Art Scene (front cover), Chicago Tribune Magazine (major color article), Chicago Japanese American News, Strong Coffee, Reader, Milwaukee Journal, Clarion, Kaleidoscope, Laurel Leader-Call, The Advertiser News, Times-Picayune (front page, major color articles), Michigan Alumnus (major color article), Michigan Today (major color article), Mardi Gras Guide (major color article), The Ann Arbor News (front covers), Park Slope Courier (color pages), 24/7 (color pages), Brooklyn Free Press (front cover) and The World Tribune.

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Reference (videos featuring sea rabbits and Dr. Takeshi Yamada):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ek-GsW9ay0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJK04yQUX2o&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrCCxV5S-EE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QnW26dQKg&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpVCqEjFXk0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NlcIZTFIj8&feature=fvw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UPzGvwq57g

s87.photobucket.com/albums/k130/katiecavell/NYC%2008/Coney%20Island/?action=view&current=SeaRabbitVid.mp4

www.animalnewyork.com/2012/what-are-you-doing-tonight-con...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAdsChmSR8

 

Reference (sea rabbit artifacts)

www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/06/coney-island-sea-rabbit...

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417188428/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417189548/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5416579163/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417191794/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192426/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192938/in/photostream

 

Reference (flickr):

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit15/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit14/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit13

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit12

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit11

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit10

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit9/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit8/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit7

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit6

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit5/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit4/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit2/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit1/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders3/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders2

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/

www.flickr.com/photos/takeshiyamadapaintings/

 

Reference (newspaper articles and reviews):

www.amctv.com/shows/immortalized/about

blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/immortalized-cast-photos/...

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021750...

www.villagevoice.com/2006-11-07/nyc-life/the-stuffing-dre...

karlshuker.blogspot.com/2011/06/giant-sea-serpents-and-ch...

amusingthezillion.com/2011/12/08/takeshi-yamadas-jersey-d...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/12/07/art-of-the-day-freak-tax...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/10/27/oct-29-at-coney-island-l...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/09/18/photo-of-the-day-takeshi...

amusingthezillion.com/2009/11/07/thru-dec-31-at-coney-isl...

4strange.blogspot.com/2009/02/ten-of-takeshi-yamada-colle...

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/5440224421/siz...

 

Reference (fine art websites):

www.roguetaxidermy.com/members_detail.php?id=528

www.brooklynartproject.com/photo/photo/listForContributor...

www.bsagarts.org/member-listing/takeshi-yamada/

www.horseshoecrab.org/poem/feature/takeshi.html

www.artfagcity.com/2012/09/06/recommended-go-brooklyn-stu...

 

Reference (other videos):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=otSh91iC3C4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhIR-lz1Mrs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttREu63Ksg

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Watercolor/colored pencils illustrations done for the animated CEPHARTHROPODA series.

 

See the final illustrations and read more about these imaginary species here:

www.behance.net/gallery/26359797/CEPHARTHROPODA-(Animated-GIFs)

 

Thanks for viewing!

"A sea serpent or sea dragon is a type of sea monster either wholly or partly serpentine. Sightings of sea serpents have been reported for hundreds of years, and continue to be claimed today. Cryptozoologist Bruce Champagne identified more than 1,200 purported sea serpent sightings. It is currently believed that the sightings can be best explained as known animals such as oarfish, whales, or sharks (in particular, the frilled shark). Some cryptozoologists have suggested that the sea serpents are relict plesiosaurs, mosasaurs or other Mesozoic marine reptiles, an idea often associated with lake monsters such as the Loch Ness Monster."

 

pencil, watercolors and digital

 

check out the "Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cryptozoology" here: www.behance.net/gallery/Illustrated-Encyclopedia-of-Crypt...

 

Thanks for watching!

About Dr. Takeshi Yamada:

 

Educator, medical assistant, author and artist Takeshi Yamada was born and raised at a traditional and respectable house of samurai in Osaka, Japan in 1960. He studied art at Nakanoshima College of Art in Osaka, Japan. As an international exchange student of Osaka Art University, he moved to the United States in 1983 and studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA and Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD in 1983-85, and completed his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1985.

 

Yamada obtained his Master of Fine Art Degree in 1987 at the University of Michigan, School of Art in Ann Arbor, MI. Yamada’s “Visual Anthropology Artworks” reflects unique, distinctive and often quickly disappearing culture around him. In 1987, Yamada moved to Chicago, and by 1990, Yamada successfully fused Eastern and Western visual culture and variety of cross-cultural mythology in urban allegories, and he became a major figure of the River North (“SUHU” district) art scene. During that time he also developed a provocative media persona and established his unique style of super-realism paintings furnishing ghostly images of people and optically enhanced pictorial structures. By 1990, his artworks were widely exhibited internationally. In 2000, Yamada moved to New York City.

 

Today, he is highly media-featured and internationally famed for his “rogue taxidermy” sculptures and large-scale installations, which he calls “specimens” rather than “artworks”. He also calls himself “super artist” and “gate keeper” rather than the “(self-expressing) artist“. His passion for Cabinet of Curiosities started when he was in kindergarten, collecting natural specimens and built his own Wunderkammer (German word to express “Cabinet of Curiosities“). At age eight, he started creating “rogue taxidermy monsters” such as two-headed lizards, by assembling different parts of animal carcasses.

 

Internationally, Yamada had over 600 major fine art exhibitions including 50 solo exhibitions including Spain, The Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Columbia, and the United States. Yamada also taught classes and made public speeches at over 40 educational institutions including American Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State Museum, Laurenand Rogers Museum of Art, International Museum of Surgical Science, University of Minnesota, Montana State University, Eastern Oregon University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Mount Vernon Nazarene College, Salem State College, Osaka College of Arts, Chemeketa Community College, Maryland Institute College of Art, etc. Yamada’s artworks are collection of over 30 museums and universities in addition to hundreds of corporate/private art collectors internationally. Yamada and his artworks were featured in over 400 video websites. In addition, rogue taxidermy artworks, sideshow gaffs, cryptozoological artworks, large sideshow banners and showfronts created by Yamada in the last 40 years have been exhibited at over 100 of state fairs and festivals annually nationwide, up to and including the present.

  

Yamada won numerous prestigious awards and honors i.e., “International Man of the Year”, “Outstanding Artists and Designers of the 20th Century”, “2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century”, “International Educator of the Year”, “One Thousand Great Americans”, “Outstanding People of the 20th Century”, “21st Century Award for Achievement”, “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in The World”. The Mayors of New Orleans, Louisiana and Gary, Indiana awarded him the “Key to the City”. Yamada’s artworks are collections of many museums and universities/colleges i.e., Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Chicago Athenaeum Museum, Eastern Oregon University, Montana State University and Ohio State University.

 

Yamada was profiled in numerous TV programs in the United States, Japan and Philippine, Columbia, i.e., A&E History Channel, Brooklyn Cable Access Television, “Chicago’s Very Own” in Chicago, “Takeshi Yamada’s Divine Comedy” in New Orleans, and Chicago Public Television’s Channel ID. Yamada also published 22 books based on his each major fine art projects i.e., “Homage to the Horseshoe Crab”, Medical Journal of the Artist”, “Graphic Works 1996-1999”, “Phantom City”, “Divine Comedy”, “Miniatures”, “Louisville”, “Visual Anthropology 2000”, “Heaven and Hell”, “Citizen Kings” and “Dukes and Saints” in the United States. In prints, Yamada and his artworks have been featured in numerous books, magazine and newspapers internationally i.e., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time out New York (full page color interview), Washington Times, The Fine Art Index, New American Paintings, Village Voice 9full page interview), Chicago Art Scene (front cover), Chicago Tribune Magazine (major color article), Chicago Japanese American News, Strong Coffee, Reader, Milwaukee Journal, Clarion, Kaleidoscope, Laurel Leader-Call, The Advertiser News, Times-Picayune (front page, major color articles), Michigan Alumnus (major color article), Michigan Today (major color article), Mardi Gras Guide (major color article), The Ann Arbor News (front covers), Park Slope Courier (color pages), 24/7 (color pages), Brooklyn Free Press (front cover) and The World Tribune.

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Reference (videos featuring sea rabbits and Dr. Takeshi Yamada):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ek-GsW9ay0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJK04yQUX2o&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrCCxV5S-EE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QnW26dQKg&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpVCqEjFXk0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NlcIZTFIj8&feature=fvw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UPzGvwq57g

s87.photobucket.com/albums/k130/katiecavell/NYC%2008/Coney%20Island/?action=view&current=SeaRabbitVid.mp4

www.animalnewyork.com/2012/what-are-you-doing-tonight-con...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAdsChmSR8

 

Reference (sea rabbit artifacts)

www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/06/coney-island-sea-rabbit...

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417188428/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417189548/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5416579163/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417191794/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192426/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192938/in/photostream

 

Reference (flickr):

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit15/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit14/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit13

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit12

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit11

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit10

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit9/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit8/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit7

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit6

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit5/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit4/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit2/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit1/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders3/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders2

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/

www.flickr.com/photos/takeshiyamadapaintings/

 

Reference (newspaper articles and reviews):

www.amctv.com/shows/immortalized/about

blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/immortalized-cast-photos/...

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021750...

www.villagevoice.com/2006-11-07/nyc-life/the-stuffing-dre...

karlshuker.blogspot.com/2011/06/giant-sea-serpents-and-ch...

amusingthezillion.com/2011/12/08/takeshi-yamadas-jersey-d...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/12/07/art-of-the-day-freak-tax...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/10/27/oct-29-at-coney-island-l...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/09/18/photo-of-the-day-takeshi...

amusingthezillion.com/2009/11/07/thru-dec-31-at-coney-isl...

4strange.blogspot.com/2009/02/ten-of-takeshi-yamada-colle...

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/5440224421/siz...

 

Reference (fine art websites):

www.roguetaxidermy.com/members_detail.php?id=528

www.brooklynartproject.com/photo/photo/listForContributor...

www.bsagarts.org/member-listing/takeshi-yamada/

www.horseshoecrab.org/poem/feature/takeshi.html

www.artfagcity.com/2012/09/06/recommended-go-brooklyn-stu...

 

Reference (other videos):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=otSh91iC3C4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhIR-lz1Mrs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttREu63Ksg

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Loch Ness is a large freshwater loch in the Scottish Highlands extending for approximately 37 kilometres (23 miles) southwest of Inverness. It takes its name from the River Ness, which flows from the northern end. Loch Ness is best known for alleged sightings of the cryptozoological Loch Ness Monster, also known affectionately as "Nessie" (Scottish Gaelic: Niseag). It is one of a series of interconnected, murky bodies of water in Scotland; its water visibility is exceptionally low due to a high peat content in the surrounding soil. The southern end connects to Loch Oich by the River Oich and a section of the Caledonian Canal. The northern end connects to Loch Dochfour via the River Ness, which then ultimately leads to the North Sea via the Moray Firth.

 

Loch Ness is the second-largest Scottish loch by surface area after Loch Lomond at 56 km2 (22 sq mi), but due to its great depth it is the largest by volume in the British Isles. Its deepest point is 230 metres (126 fathoms; 755 feet), making it the second deepest loch in Scotland after Loch Morar. It contains more water than all the lakes in England and Wales combined, and is the largest body of water in the Great Glen, which runs from Inverness in the north to Fort William in the south. Its surface is 16 metres (52 feet) above sea level. It contains a single, artificial island named Cherry Island (Scottish Gaelic: Eilean Muireach) at the southwestern end. There are nine villages around the loch, as well as Urquhart Castle; the village of Drumnadrochit contains a "Loch Ness Centre and Exhibition".

 

Loch Ness is an elongated freshwater loch in the Scottish Highlands southwest of Inverness, extending for approximately 37 kilometres (23 miles) and flowing from southwest to northeast. At 56 km2 (22 sq mi), it is the second-largest Scottish loch by surface area after Loch Lomond, but due to its great depth it is the largest by volume in the British Isles. Its deepest point is 230 metres (126 fathoms; 755 feet), making it the second deepest loch in Scotland after Loch Morar. A 2016 survey claimed to have discovered a crevice extending to a depth of 271 m (889 ft), but further research determined this to be a sonar anomaly. Its surface is 16 metres (52 feet) above sea level. It contains more water than all the lakes in England and Wales combined, and is the largest body of water in the Great Glen, which runs from Inverness in the north to Fort William in the south. Loch Ness lies along the Great Glen Fault, which forms a line of weakness in the rocks which has been excavated by glacial erosion, forming the Great Glen and the basins of Loch Lochy, Loch Oich and Loch Ness.

 

Loch Ness has one small island, Cherry Island (Scottish Gaelic: Eilean Muireach, meaning Murdoch's Island), at the southwestern end of the loch. It is an artificial island, known as a crannog, and was likely constructed during the Iron Age. The island was originally 160 feet (49 m) by 168 feet (51 m) across, but is now smaller as the water level was raised during the construction of the Caledonian Canal in the early nineteenth century. There was formerly a second, natural island nearby named Dog Island (Scottish Gaelic: Eilean Nan Con), but it was submerged when the water level rose. A castle stood on Cherry Island during the 15th century; this was constructed of stone and oak wood and was likely used as a fortified refuge. It has been suggested that Eilean Muireach may have been a hunting lodge, with Eilean Nan Con the home for the hunting dogs.

 

The loch is one of a series of interconnected, murky bodies of water in Scotland; its water visibility is exceptionally low due to a high peat content in the surrounding soil. The southern end is fed by the River Oich, which runs from Loch Oich. The northern end flows out through the Bona Narrows into Loch Dochfour; the Bathymetrical survey of the Scottish fresh-water lochs considered Loch Dochfour to be distinct from Loch Ness proper, but capable of being regarded as forming part of Loch Ness. Dochgarroch weir at the downstream end of Loch Dochfour delineates the start of the River Ness, which connects to the nearby and ultimately leads through Inverness to the North Sea via the Moray Firth. Loch Ness forms part of the Caledonian Canal, which comprises 60 miles (100 kilometres) of waterways connecting the east coast of Scotland at Inverness with the west coast at Corpachthe near Fort William. Only one-third of the entire length is man-made, the rest being formed by Loch Dochfour, Loch Ness, Loch Oich, and Loch Lochy, with the man-made canals running parallel with rivers such as the River Oich.

 

Loch Ness is known as the home of the Loch Ness Monster (also known as "Nessie"), a cryptid, reputedly a large unknown animal. It is similar to other supposed lake monsters in Scotland and elsewhere, though its description varies from one account to the next. Popular interest and belief in the animal's existence have varied since it was first brought to the world's attention in 1933.

 

The Highlands is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.

 

The area is very sparsely populated, with many mountain ranges dominating the region, and includes the highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis. During the 18th and early 19th centuries the population of the Highlands rose to around 300,000, but from c. 1841 and for the next 160 years, the natural increase in population was exceeded by emigration (mostly to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and migration to the industrial cities of Scotland and England.) and passim  The area is now one of the most sparsely populated in Europe. At 9.1/km2 (24/sq mi) in 2012, the population density in the Highlands and Islands is less than one seventh of Scotland's as a whole.

 

The Highland Council is the administrative body for much of the Highlands, with its administrative centre at Inverness. However, the Highlands also includes parts of the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Moray, North Ayrshire, Perth and Kinross, Stirling and West Dunbartonshire.

 

The Scottish Highlands is the only area in the British Isles to have the taiga biome as it features concentrated populations of Scots pine forest: see Caledonian Forest. It is the most mountainous part of the United Kingdom.

 

Between the 15th century and the mid-20th century, the area differed from most of the Lowlands in terms of language. In Scottish Gaelic, the region is known as the Gàidhealtachd, because it was traditionally the Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland, although the language is now largely confined to The Hebrides. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably but have different meanings in their respective languages. Scottish English (in its Highland form) is the predominant language of the area today, though Highland English has been influenced by Gaelic speech to a significant extent. Historically, the "Highland line" distinguished the two Scottish cultures. While the Highland line broadly followed the geography of the Grampians in the south, it continued in the north, cutting off the north-eastern areas, that is Eastern Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, from the more Gaelic Highlands and Hebrides.

 

Historically, the major social unit of the Highlands was the clan. Scottish kings, particularly James VI, saw clans as a challenge to their authority; the Highlands was seen by many as a lawless region. The Scots of the Lowlands viewed the Highlanders as backward and more "Irish". The Highlands were seen as the overspill of Gaelic Ireland. They made this distinction by separating Germanic "Scots" English and the Gaelic by renaming it "Erse" a play on Eire. Following the Union of the Crowns, James VI had the military strength to back up any attempts to impose some control. The result was, in 1609, the Statutes of Iona which started the process of integrating clan leaders into Scottish society. The gradual changes continued into the 19th century, as clan chiefs thought of themselves less as patriarchal leaders of their people and more as commercial landlords. The first effect on the clansmen who were their tenants was the change to rents being payable in money rather than in kind. Later, rents were increased as Highland landowners sought to increase their income. This was followed, mostly in the period 1760–1850, by agricultural improvement that often (particularly in the Western Highlands) involved clearance of the population to make way for large scale sheep farms. Displaced tenants were set up in crofting communities in the process. The crofts were intended not to provide all the needs of their occupiers; they were expected to work in other industries such as kelping and fishing. Crofters came to rely substantially on seasonal migrant work, particularly in the Lowlands. This gave impetus to the learning of English, which was seen by many rural Gaelic speakers to be the essential "language of work".

 

Older historiography attributes the collapse of the clan system to the aftermath of the Jacobite risings. This is now thought less influential by historians. Following the Jacobite rising of 1745 the British government enacted a series of laws to try to suppress the clan system, including bans on the bearing of arms and the wearing of tartan, and limitations on the activities of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Most of this legislation was repealed by the end of the 18th century as the Jacobite threat subsided. There was soon a rehabilitation of Highland culture. Tartan was adopted for Highland regiments in the British Army, which poor Highlanders joined in large numbers in the era of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1790–1815). Tartan had largely been abandoned by the ordinary people of the region, but in the 1820s, tartan and the kilt were adopted by members of the social elite, not just in Scotland, but across Europe. The international craze for tartan, and for idealising a romanticised Highlands, was set off by the Ossian cycle, and further popularised by the works of Walter Scott. His "staging" of the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 and the king's wearing of tartan resulted in a massive upsurge in demand for kilts and tartans that could not be met by the Scottish woollen industry. Individual clan tartans were largely designated in this period and they became a major symbol of Scottish identity. This "Highlandism", by which all of Scotland was identified with the culture of the Highlands, was cemented by Queen Victoria's interest in the country, her adoption of Balmoral as a major royal retreat, and her interest in "tartenry".

 

Recurrent famine affected the Highlands for much of its history, with significant instances as late as 1817 in the Eastern Highlands and the early 1850s in the West.  Over the 18th century, the region had developed a trade of black cattle into Lowland markets, and this was balanced by imports of meal into the area. There was a critical reliance on this trade to provide sufficient food, and it is seen as an essential prerequisite for the population growth that started in the 18th century. Most of the Highlands, particularly in the North and West was short of the arable land that was essential for the mixed, run rig based, communal farming that existed before agricultural improvement was introduced into the region.[a] Between the 1760s and the 1830s there was a substantial trade in unlicensed whisky that had been distilled in the Highlands. Lowland distillers (who were not able to avoid the heavy taxation of this product) complained that Highland whisky made up more than half the market. The development of the cattle trade is taken as evidence that the pre-improvement Highlands was not an immutable system, but did exploit the economic opportunities that came its way.  The illicit whisky trade demonstrates the entrepreneurial ability of the peasant classes. 

 

Agricultural improvement reached the Highlands mostly over the period 1760 to 1850. Agricultural advisors, factors, land surveyors and others educated in the thinking of Adam Smith were keen to put into practice the new ideas taught in Scottish universities.  Highland landowners, many of whom were burdened with chronic debts, were generally receptive to the advice they offered and keen to increase the income from their land.  In the East and South the resulting change was similar to that in the Lowlands, with the creation of larger farms with single tenants, enclosure of the old run rig fields, introduction of new crops (such as turnips), land drainage and, as a consequence of all this, eviction, as part of the Highland clearances, of many tenants and cottars. Some of those cleared found employment on the new, larger farms, others moved to the accessible towns of the Lowlands.

 

In the West and North, evicted tenants were usually given tenancies in newly created crofting communities, while their former holdings were converted into large sheep farms. Sheep farmers could pay substantially higher rents than the run rig farmers and were much less prone to falling into arrears. Each croft was limited in size so that the tenants would have to find work elsewhere. The major alternatives were fishing and the kelp industry. Landlords took control of the kelp shores, deducting the wages earned by their tenants from the rent due and retaining the large profits that could be earned at the high prices paid for the processed product during the Napoleonic wars.

 

When the Napoleonic wars finished in 1815, the Highland industries were affected by the return to a peacetime economy. The price of black cattle fell, nearly halving between 1810 and the 1830s. Kelp prices had peaked in 1810, but reduced from £9 a ton in 1823 to £3 13s 4d a ton in 1828. Wool prices were also badly affected.  This worsened the financial problems of debt-encumbered landlords. Then, in 1846, potato blight arrived in the Highlands, wiping out the essential subsistence crop for the overcrowded crofting communities. As the famine struck, the government made clear to landlords that it was their responsibility to provide famine relief for their tenants. The result of the economic downturn had been that a large proportion of Highland estates were sold in the first half of the 19th century. T M Devine points out that in the region most affected by the potato famine, by 1846, 70 per cent of the landowners were new purchasers who had not owned Highland property before 1800. More landlords were obliged to sell due to the cost of famine relief. Those who were protected from the worst of the crisis were those with extensive rental income from sheep farms.  Government loans were made available for drainage works, road building and other improvements and many crofters became temporary migrants – taking work in the Lowlands. When the potato famine ceased in 1856, this established a pattern of more extensive working away from the Highlands.

 

The unequal concentration of land ownership remained an emotional and controversial subject, of enormous importance to the Highland economy, and eventually became a cornerstone of liberal radicalism. The poor crofters were politically powerless, and many of them turned to religion. They embraced the popularly oriented, fervently evangelical Presbyterian revival after 1800. Most joined the breakaway "Free Church" after 1843. This evangelical movement was led by lay preachers who themselves came from the lower strata, and whose preaching was implicitly critical of the established order. The religious change energised the crofters and separated them from the landlords; it helped prepare them for their successful and violent challenge to the landlords in the 1880s through the Highland Land League. Violence erupted, starting on the Isle of Skye, when Highland landlords cleared their lands for sheep and deer parks. It was quietened when the government stepped in, passing the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1886 to reduce rents, guarantee fixity of tenure, and break up large estates to provide crofts for the homeless. This contrasted with the Irish Land War underway at the same time, where the Irish were intensely politicised through roots in Irish nationalism, while political dimensions were limited. In 1885 three Independent Crofter candidates were elected to Parliament, which listened to their pleas. The results included explicit security for the Scottish smallholders in the "crofting counties"; the legal right to bequeath tenancies to descendants; and the creation of a Crofting Commission. The Crofters as a political movement faded away by 1892, and the Liberal Party gained their votes.

 

Today, the Highlands are the largest of Scotland's whisky producing regions; the relevant area runs from Orkney to the Isle of Arran in the south and includes the northern isles and much of Inner and Outer Hebrides, Argyll, Stirlingshire, Arran, as well as sections of Perthshire and Aberdeenshire. (Other sources treat The Islands, except Islay, as a separate whisky producing region.) This massive area has over 30 distilleries, or 47 when the Islands sub-region is included in the count. According to one source, the top five are The Macallan, Glenfiddich, Aberlour, Glenfarclas and Balvenie. While Speyside is geographically within the Highlands, that region is specified as distinct in terms of whisky productions. Speyside single malt whiskies are produced by about 50 distilleries.

 

According to Visit Scotland, Highlands whisky is "fruity, sweet, spicy, malty". Another review states that Northern Highlands single malt is "sweet and full-bodied", the Eastern Highlands and Southern Highlands whiskies tend to be "lighter in texture" while the distilleries in the Western Highlands produce single malts with a "much peatier influence".

 

The Scottish Reformation achieved partial success in the Highlands. Roman Catholicism remained strong in some areas, owing to remote locations and the efforts of Franciscan missionaries from Ireland, who regularly came to celebrate Mass. There remain significant Catholic strongholds within the Highlands and Islands such as Moidart and Morar on the mainland and South Uist and Barra in the southern Outer Hebrides. The remoteness of the region and the lack of a Gaelic-speaking clergy undermined the missionary efforts of the established church. The later 18th century saw somewhat greater success, owing to the efforts of the SSPCK missionaries and to the disruption of traditional society after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. In the 19th century, the evangelical Free Churches, which were more accepting of Gaelic language and culture, grew rapidly, appealing much more strongly than did the established church.

 

For the most part, however, the Highlands are considered predominantly Protestant, belonging to the Church of Scotland. In contrast to the Catholic southern islands, the northern Outer Hebrides islands (Lewis, Harris and North Uist) have an exceptionally high proportion of their population belonging to the Protestant Free Church of Scotland or the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The Outer Hebrides have been described as the last bastion of Calvinism in Britain and the Sabbath remains widely observed. Inverness and the surrounding area has a majority Protestant population, with most locals belonging to either The Kirk or the Free Church of Scotland. The church maintains a noticeable presence within the area, with church attendance notably higher than in other parts of Scotland. Religion continues to play an important role in Highland culture, with Sabbath observance still widely practised, particularly in the Hebrides.

 

In traditional Scottish geography, the Highlands refers to that part of Scotland north-west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which crosses mainland Scotland in a near-straight line from Helensburgh to Stonehaven. However the flat coastal lands that occupy parts of the counties of Nairnshire, Morayshire, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire are often excluded as they do not share the distinctive geographical and cultural features of the rest of the Highlands. The north-east of Caithness, as well as Orkney and Shetland, are also often excluded from the Highlands, although the Hebrides are usually included. The Highland area, as so defined, differed from the Lowlands in language and tradition, having preserved Gaelic speech and customs centuries after the anglicisation of the latter; this led to a growing perception of a divide, with the cultural distinction between Highlander and Lowlander first noted towards the end of the 14th century. In Aberdeenshire, the boundary between the Highlands and the Lowlands is not well defined. There is a stone beside the A93 road near the village of Dinnet on Royal Deeside which states 'You are now in the Highlands', although there are areas of Highland character to the east of this point.

 

A much wider definition of the Highlands is that used by the Scotch whisky industry. Highland single malts are produced at distilleries north of an imaginary line between Dundee and Greenock, thus including all of Aberdeenshire and Angus.

 

Inverness is regarded as the Capital of the Highlands, although less so in the Highland parts of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perthshire and Stirlingshire which look more to Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and Stirling as their commercial centres.

 

The Highland Council area, created as one of the local government regions of Scotland, has been a unitary council area since 1996. The council area excludes a large area of the southern and eastern Highlands, and the Western Isles, but includes Caithness. Highlands is sometimes used, however, as a name for the council area, as in the former Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern is also used to refer to the area, as in the former Northern Constabulary. These former bodies both covered the Highland council area and the island council areas of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.

 

Much of the Highlands area overlaps the Highlands and Islands area. An electoral region called Highlands and Islands is used in elections to the Scottish Parliament: this area includes Orkney and Shetland, as well as the Highland Council local government area, the Western Isles and most of the Argyll and Bute and Moray local government areas. Highlands and Islands has, however, different meanings in different contexts. It means Highland (the local government area), Orkney, Shetland, and the Western Isles in Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern, as in Northern Constabulary, refers to the same area as that covered by the fire and rescue service.

 

There have been trackways from the Lowlands to the Highlands since prehistoric times. Many traverse the Mounth, a spur of mountainous land that extends from the higher inland range to the North Sea slightly north of Stonehaven. The most well-known and historically important trackways are the Causey Mounth, Elsick Mounth, Cryne Corse Mounth and Cairnamounth.

 

Although most of the Highlands is geographically on the British mainland, it is somewhat less accessible than the rest of Britain; thus most UK couriers categorise it separately, alongside Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and other offshore islands. They thus charge additional fees for delivery to the Highlands, or exclude the area entirely. While the physical remoteness from the largest population centres inevitably leads to higher transit cost, there is confusion and consternation over the scale of the fees charged and the effectiveness of their communication, and the use of the word Mainland in their justification. Since the charges are often based on postcode areas, many far less remote areas, including some which are traditionally considered part of the lowlands, are also subject to these charges. Royal Mail is the only delivery network bound by a Universal Service Obligation to charge a uniform tariff across the UK. This, however, applies only to mail items and not larger packages which are dealt with by its Parcelforce division.

 

The Highlands lie to the north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which runs from Arran to Stonehaven. This part of Scotland is largely composed of ancient rocks from the Cambrian and Precambrian periods which were uplifted during the later Caledonian Orogeny. Smaller formations of Lewisian gneiss in the northwest are up to 3 billion years old. The overlying rocks of the Torridon Sandstone form mountains in the Torridon Hills such as Liathach and Beinn Eighe in Wester Ross.

 

These foundations are interspersed with many igneous intrusions of a more recent age, the remnants of which have formed mountain massifs such as the Cairngorms and the Cuillin of Skye. A significant exception to the above are the fossil-bearing beds of Old Red Sandstone found principally along the Moray Firth coast and partially down the Highland Boundary Fault. The Jurassic beds found in isolated locations on Skye and Applecross reflect the complex underlying geology. They are the original source of much North Sea oil. The Great Glen is formed along a transform fault which divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands.

 

The entire region was covered by ice sheets during the Pleistocene ice ages, save perhaps for a few nunataks. The complex geomorphology includes incised valleys and lochs carved by the action of mountain streams and ice, and a topography of irregularly distributed mountains whose summits have similar heights above sea-level, but whose bases depend upon the amount of denudation to which the plateau has been subjected in various places.

Climate

 

The region is much warmer than other areas at similar latitudes (such as Kamchatka in Russia, or Labrador in Canada) because of the Gulf Stream making it cool, damp and temperate. The Köppen climate classification is "Cfb" at low altitudes, then becoming "Cfc", "Dfc" and "ET" at higher altitudes.

 

Places of interest

An Teallach

Aonach Mòr (Nevis Range ski centre)

Arrochar Alps

Balmoral Castle

Balquhidder

Battlefield of Culloden

Beinn Alligin

Beinn Eighe

Ben Cruachan hydro-electric power station

Ben Lomond

Ben Macdui (second highest mountain in Scotland and UK)

Ben Nevis (highest mountain in Scotland and UK)

Cairngorms National Park

Cairngorm Ski centre near Aviemore

Cairngorm Mountains

Caledonian Canal

Cape Wrath

Carrick Castle

Castle Stalker

Castle Tioram

Chanonry Point

Conic Hill

Culloden Moor

Dunadd

Duart Castle

Durness

Eilean Donan

Fingal's Cave (Staffa)

Fort George

Glen Coe

Glen Etive

Glen Kinglas

Glen Lyon

Glen Orchy

Glenshee Ski Centre

Glen Shiel

Glen Spean

Glenfinnan (and its railway station and viaduct)

Grampian Mountains

Hebrides

Highland Folk Museum – The first open-air museum in the UK.

Highland Wildlife Park

Inveraray Castle

Inveraray Jail

Inverness Castle

Inverewe Garden

Iona Abbey

Isle of Staffa

Kilchurn Castle

Kilmartin Glen

Liathach

Lecht Ski Centre

Loch Alsh

Loch Ard

Loch Awe

Loch Assynt

Loch Earn

Loch Etive

Loch Fyne

Loch Goil

Loch Katrine

Loch Leven

Loch Linnhe

Loch Lochy

Loch Lomond

Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park

Loch Lubnaig

Loch Maree

Loch Morar

Loch Morlich

Loch Ness

Loch Nevis

Loch Rannoch

Loch Tay

Lochranza

Luss

Meall a' Bhuiridh (Glencoe Ski Centre)

Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary at Loch Creran

Rannoch Moor

Red Cuillin

Rest and Be Thankful stretch of A83

River Carron, Wester Ross

River Spey

River Tay

Ross and Cromarty

Smoo Cave

Stob Coire a' Chàirn

Stac Polly

Strathspey Railway

Sutherland

Tor Castle

Torridon Hills

Urquhart Castle

West Highland Line (scenic railway)

West Highland Way (Long-distance footpath)

Wester Ross

In honor of Halloween... This great illustration by Gil Cohen is for one of the stories featured in our collection of classic monster stories and artwork from vintage men's adventure magazines, the CRYPTOZOOLOGY ANTHOLOGY (www.amazon.com/Cryptozoology-Anthology-Mysterious-Creatur...). Originally in MAN'S WORLD, October 1973. More info at www.MensCrypto.com.

About Dr. Takeshi Yamada:

 

Educator, medical assistant, author and artist Takeshi Yamada was born and raised at a traditional and respectable house of samurai in Osaka, Japan in 1960. He studied art at Nakanoshima College of Art in Osaka, Japan. As an international exchange student of Osaka Art University, he moved to the United States in 1983 and studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA and Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD in 1983-85, and completed his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1985.

 

Yamada obtained his Master of Fine Art Degree in 1987 at the University of Michigan, School of Art in Ann Arbor, MI. Yamada’s “Visual Anthropology Artworks” reflects unique, distinctive and often quickly disappearing culture around him. In 1987, Yamada moved to Chicago, and by 1990, Yamada successfully fused Eastern and Western visual culture and variety of cross-cultural mythology in urban allegories, and he became a major figure of the River North (“SUHU” district) art scene. During that time he also developed a provocative media persona and established his unique style of super-realism paintings furnishing ghostly images of people and optically enhanced pictorial structures. By 1990, his artworks were widely exhibited internationally. In 2000, Yamada moved to New York City.

 

Today, he is highly media-featured and internationally famed for his “rogue taxidermy” sculptures and large-scale installations, which he calls “specimens” rather than “artworks”. He also calls himself “super artist” and “gate keeper” rather than the “(self-expressing) artist“. His passion for Cabinet of Curiosities started when he was in kindergarten, collecting natural specimens and built his own Wunderkammer (German word to express “Cabinet of Curiosities“). At age eight, he started creating “rogue taxidermy monsters” such as two-headed lizards, by assembling different parts of animal carcasses.

 

Internationally, Yamada had over 600 major fine art exhibitions including 50 solo exhibitions including Spain, The Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Columbia, and the United States. Yamada also taught classes and made public speeches at over 40 educational institutions including American Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State Museum, Laurenand Rogers Museum of Art, International Museum of Surgical Science, University of Minnesota, Montana State University, Eastern Oregon University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Mount Vernon Nazarene College, Salem State College, Osaka College of Arts, Chemeketa Community College, Maryland Institute College of Art, etc. Yamada’s artworks are collection of over 30 museums and universities in addition to hundreds of corporate/private art collectors internationally. Yamada and his artworks were featured in over 400 video websites. In addition, rogue taxidermy artworks, sideshow gaffs, cryptozoological artworks, large sideshow banners and showfronts created by Yamada in the last 40 years have been exhibited at over 100 of state fairs and festivals annually nationwide, up to and including the present.

  

Yamada won numerous prestigious awards and honors i.e., “International Man of the Year”, “Outstanding Artists and Designers of the 20th Century”, “2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century”, “International Educator of the Year”, “One Thousand Great Americans”, “Outstanding People of the 20th Century”, “21st Century Award for Achievement”, “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in The World”. The Mayors of New Orleans, Louisiana and Gary, Indiana awarded him the “Key to the City”. Yamada’s artworks are collections of many museums and universities/colleges i.e., Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Chicago Athenaeum Museum, Eastern Oregon University, Montana State University and Ohio State University.

 

Yamada was profiled in numerous TV programs in the United States, Japan and Philippine, Columbia, i.e., A&E History Channel, Brooklyn Cable Access Television, “Chicago’s Very Own” in Chicago, “Takeshi Yamada’s Divine Comedy” in New Orleans, and Chicago Public Television’s Channel ID. Yamada also published 22 books based on his each major fine art projects i.e., “Homage to the Horseshoe Crab”, Medical Journal of the Artist”, “Graphic Works 1996-1999”, “Phantom City”, “Divine Comedy”, “Miniatures”, “Louisville”, “Visual Anthropology 2000”, “Heaven and Hell”, “Citizen Kings” and “Dukes and Saints” in the United States. In prints, Yamada and his artworks have been featured in numerous books, magazine and newspapers internationally i.e., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time out New York (full page color interview), Washington Times, The Fine Art Index, New American Paintings, Village Voice 9full page interview), Chicago Art Scene (front cover), Chicago Tribune Magazine (major color article), Chicago Japanese American News, Strong Coffee, Reader, Milwaukee Journal, Clarion, Kaleidoscope, Laurel Leader-Call, The Advertiser News, Times-Picayune (front page, major color articles), Michigan Alumnus (major color article), Michigan Today (major color article), Mardi Gras Guide (major color article), The Ann Arbor News (front covers), Park Slope Courier (color pages), 24/7 (color pages), Brooklyn Free Press (front cover) and The World Tribune.

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Reference (videos featuring sea rabbits and Dr. Takeshi Yamada):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ek-GsW9ay0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJK04yQUX2o&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrCCxV5S-EE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QnW26dQKg&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpVCqEjFXk0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NlcIZTFIj8&feature=fvw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UPzGvwq57g

s87.photobucket.com/albums/k130/katiecavell/NYC%2008/Coney%20Island/?action=view&current=SeaRabbitVid.mp4

www.animalnewyork.com/2012/what-are-you-doing-tonight-con...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAdsChmSR8

 

Reference (sea rabbit artifacts)

www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/06/coney-island-sea-rabbit...

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417188428/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417189548/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5416579163/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417191794/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192426/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192938/in/photostream

 

Reference (flickr):

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit15/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit14/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit13

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit12

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit11

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit10

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit9/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit8/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit7

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit6

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit5/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit4/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit2/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit1/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders3/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders2

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/

www.flickr.com/photos/takeshiyamadapaintings/

 

Reference (newspaper articles and reviews):

www.amctv.com/shows/immortalized/about

blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/immortalized-cast-photos/...

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021750...

www.villagevoice.com/2006-11-07/nyc-life/the-stuffing-dre...

karlshuker.blogspot.com/2011/06/giant-sea-serpents-and-ch...

amusingthezillion.com/2011/12/08/takeshi-yamadas-jersey-d...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/12/07/art-of-the-day-freak-tax...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/10/27/oct-29-at-coney-island-l...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/09/18/photo-of-the-day-takeshi...

amusingthezillion.com/2009/11/07/thru-dec-31-at-coney-isl...

4strange.blogspot.com/2009/02/ten-of-takeshi-yamada-colle...

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/5440224421/siz...

 

Reference (fine art websites):

www.roguetaxidermy.com/members_detail.php?id=528

www.brooklynartproject.com/photo/photo/listForContributor...

www.bsagarts.org/member-listing/takeshi-yamada/

www.horseshoecrab.org/poem/feature/takeshi.html

www.artfagcity.com/2012/09/06/recommended-go-brooklyn-stu...

 

Reference (other videos):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=otSh91iC3C4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhIR-lz1Mrs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttREu63Ksg

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

About Dr. Takeshi Yamada:

 

Educator, medical assistant, author and artist Takeshi Yamada was born and raised at a traditional and respectable house of samurai in Osaka, Japan in 1960. He studied art at Nakanoshima College of Art in Osaka, Japan. As an international exchange student of Osaka Art University, he moved to the United States in 1983 and studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA and Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD in 1983-85, and completed his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1985.

 

Yamada obtained his Master of Fine Art Degree in 1987 at the University of Michigan, School of Art in Ann Arbor, MI. Yamada’s “Visual Anthropology Artworks” reflects unique, distinctive and often quickly disappearing culture around him. In 1987, Yamada moved to Chicago, and by 1990, Yamada successfully fused Eastern and Western visual culture and variety of cross-cultural mythology in urban allegories, and he became a major figure of the River North (“SUHU” district) art scene. During that time he also developed a provocative media persona and established his unique style of super-realism paintings furnishing ghostly images of people and optically enhanced pictorial structures. By 1990, his artworks were widely exhibited internationally. In 2000, Yamada moved to New York City.

 

Today, he is highly media-featured and internationally famed for his “rogue taxidermy” sculptures and large-scale installations, which he calls “specimens” rather than “artworks”. He also calls himself “super artist” and “gate keeper” rather than the “(self-expressing) artist“. His passion for Cabinet of Curiosities started when he was in kindergarten, collecting natural specimens and built his own Wunderkammer (German word to express “Cabinet of Curiosities“). At age eight, he started creating “rogue taxidermy monsters” such as two-headed lizards, by assembling different parts of animal carcasses.

 

Internationally, Yamada had over 600 major fine art exhibitions including 50 solo exhibitions including Spain, The Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Columbia, and the United States. Yamada also taught classes and made public speeches at over 40 educational institutions including American Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State Museum, Laurenand Rogers Museum of Art, International Museum of Surgical Science, University of Minnesota, Montana State University, Eastern Oregon University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Mount Vernon Nazarene College, Salem State College, Osaka College of Arts, Chemeketa Community College, Maryland Institute College of Art, etc. Yamada’s artworks are collection of over 30 museums and universities in addition to hundreds of corporate/private art collectors internationally. Yamada and his artworks were featured in over 400 video websites. In addition, rogue taxidermy artworks, sideshow gaffs, cryptozoological artworks, large sideshow banners and showfronts created by Yamada in the last 40 years have been exhibited at over 100 of state fairs and festivals annually nationwide, up to and including the present.

  

Yamada won numerous prestigious awards and honors i.e., “International Man of the Year”, “Outstanding Artists and Designers of the 20th Century”, “2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century”, “International Educator of the Year”, “One Thousand Great Americans”, “Outstanding People of the 20th Century”, “21st Century Award for Achievement”, “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in The World”. The Mayors of New Orleans, Louisiana and Gary, Indiana awarded him the “Key to the City”. Yamada’s artworks are collections of many museums and universities/colleges i.e., Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Chicago Athenaeum Museum, Eastern Oregon University, Montana State University and Ohio State University.

 

Yamada was profiled in numerous TV programs in the United States, Japan and Philippine, Columbia, i.e., A&E History Channel, Brooklyn Cable Access Television, “Chicago’s Very Own” in Chicago, “Takeshi Yamada’s Divine Comedy” in New Orleans, and Chicago Public Television’s Channel ID. Yamada also published 22 books based on his each major fine art projects i.e., “Homage to the Horseshoe Crab”, Medical Journal of the Artist”, “Graphic Works 1996-1999”, “Phantom City”, “Divine Comedy”, “Miniatures”, “Louisville”, “Visual Anthropology 2000”, “Heaven and Hell”, “Citizen Kings” and “Dukes and Saints” in the United States. In prints, Yamada and his artworks have been featured in numerous books, magazine and newspapers internationally i.e., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time out New York (full page color interview), Washington Times, The Fine Art Index, New American Paintings, Village Voice 9full page interview), Chicago Art Scene (front cover), Chicago Tribune Magazine (major color article), Chicago Japanese American News, Strong Coffee, Reader, Milwaukee Journal, Clarion, Kaleidoscope, Laurel Leader-Call, The Advertiser News, Times-Picayune (front page, major color articles), Michigan Alumnus (major color article), Michigan Today (major color article), Mardi Gras Guide (major color article), The Ann Arbor News (front covers), Park Slope Courier (color pages), 24/7 (color pages), Brooklyn Free Press (front cover) and The World Tribune.

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Reference (videos featuring sea rabbits and Dr. Takeshi Yamada):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ek-GsW9ay0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJK04yQUX2o&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrCCxV5S-EE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QnW26dQKg&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpVCqEjFXk0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NlcIZTFIj8&feature=fvw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UPzGvwq57g

s87.photobucket.com/albums/k130/katiecavell/NYC%2008/Coney%20Island/?action=view&current=SeaRabbitVid.mp4

www.animalnewyork.com/2012/what-are-you-doing-tonight-con...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAdsChmSR8

 

Reference (sea rabbit artifacts)

www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/06/coney-island-sea-rabbit...

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417188428/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417189548/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5416579163/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417191794/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192426/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192938/in/photostream

 

Reference (flickr):

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit15/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit14/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit13

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit12

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit11

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit10

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit9/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit8/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit7

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit6

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit5/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit4/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit2/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit1/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders3/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders2

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/

www.flickr.com/photos/takeshiyamadapaintings/

 

Reference (newspaper articles and reviews):

www.amctv.com/shows/immortalized/about

blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/immortalized-cast-photos/...

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021750...

www.villagevoice.com/2006-11-07/nyc-life/the-stuffing-dre...

karlshuker.blogspot.com/2011/06/giant-sea-serpents-and-ch...

amusingthezillion.com/2011/12/08/takeshi-yamadas-jersey-d...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/12/07/art-of-the-day-freak-tax...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/10/27/oct-29-at-coney-island-l...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/09/18/photo-of-the-day-takeshi...

amusingthezillion.com/2009/11/07/thru-dec-31-at-coney-isl...

4strange.blogspot.com/2009/02/ten-of-takeshi-yamada-colle...

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/5440224421/siz...

 

Reference (fine art websites):

www.roguetaxidermy.com/members_detail.php?id=528

www.brooklynartproject.com/photo/photo/listForContributor...

www.bsagarts.org/member-listing/takeshi-yamada/

www.horseshoecrab.org/poem/feature/takeshi.html

www.artfagcity.com/2012/09/06/recommended-go-brooklyn-stu...

 

Reference (other videos):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=otSh91iC3C4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhIR-lz1Mrs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttREu63Ksg

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

About Dr. Takeshi Yamada:

 

Educator, medical assistant, author and artist Takeshi Yamada was born and raised at a traditional and respectable house of samurai in Osaka, Japan in 1960. He studied art at Nakanoshima College of Art in Osaka, Japan. As an international exchange student of Osaka Art University, he moved to the United States in 1983 and studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA and Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD in 1983-85, and completed his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1985.

 

Yamada obtained his Master of Fine Art Degree in 1987 at the University of Michigan, School of Art in Ann Arbor, MI. Yamada’s “Visual Anthropology Artworks” reflects unique, distinctive and often quickly disappearing culture around him. In 1987, Yamada moved to Chicago, and by 1990, Yamada successfully fused Eastern and Western visual culture and variety of cross-cultural mythology in urban allegories, and he became a major figure of the River North (“SUHU” district) art scene. During that time he also developed a provocative media persona and established his unique style of super-realism paintings furnishing ghostly images of people and optically enhanced pictorial structures. By 1990, his artworks were widely exhibited internationally. In 2000, Yamada moved to New York City.

 

Today, he is highly media-featured and internationally famed for his “rogue taxidermy” sculptures and large-scale installations, which he calls “specimens” rather than “artworks”. He also calls himself “super artist” and “gate keeper” rather than the “(self-expressing) artist“. His passion for Cabinet of Curiosities started when he was in kindergarten, collecting natural specimens and built his own Wunderkammer (German word to express “Cabinet of Curiosities“). At age eight, he started creating “rogue taxidermy monsters” such as two-headed lizards, by assembling different parts of animal carcasses.

 

Internationally, Yamada had over 600 major fine art exhibitions including 50 solo exhibitions including Spain, The Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Columbia, and the United States. Yamada also taught classes and made public speeches at over 40 educational institutions including American Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State Museum, Laurenand Rogers Museum of Art, International Museum of Surgical Science, University of Minnesota, Montana State University, Eastern Oregon University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Mount Vernon Nazarene College, Salem State College, Osaka College of Arts, Chemeketa Community College, Maryland Institute College of Art, etc. Yamada’s artworks are collection of over 30 museums and universities in addition to hundreds of corporate/private art collectors internationally. Yamada and his artworks were featured in over 400 video websites. In addition, rogue taxidermy artworks, sideshow gaffs, cryptozoological artworks, large sideshow banners and showfronts created by Yamada in the last 40 years have been exhibited at over 100 of state fairs and festivals annually nationwide, up to and including the present.

  

Yamada won numerous prestigious awards and honors i.e., “International Man of the Year”, “Outstanding Artists and Designers of the 20th Century”, “2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century”, “International Educator of the Year”, “One Thousand Great Americans”, “Outstanding People of the 20th Century”, “21st Century Award for Achievement”, “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in The World”. The Mayors of New Orleans, Louisiana and Gary, Indiana awarded him the “Key to the City”. Yamada’s artworks are collections of many museums and universities/colleges i.e., Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Chicago Athenaeum Museum, Eastern Oregon University, Montana State University and Ohio State University.

 

Yamada was profiled in numerous TV programs in the United States, Japan and Philippine, Columbia, i.e., A&E History Channel, Brooklyn Cable Access Television, “Chicago’s Very Own” in Chicago, “Takeshi Yamada’s Divine Comedy” in New Orleans, and Chicago Public Television’s Channel ID. Yamada also published 22 books based on his each major fine art projects i.e., “Homage to the Horseshoe Crab”, Medical Journal of the Artist”, “Graphic Works 1996-1999”, “Phantom City”, “Divine Comedy”, “Miniatures”, “Louisville”, “Visual Anthropology 2000”, “Heaven and Hell”, “Citizen Kings” and “Dukes and Saints” in the United States. In prints, Yamada and his artworks have been featured in numerous books, magazine and newspapers internationally i.e., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time out New York (full page color interview), Washington Times, The Fine Art Index, New American Paintings, Village Voice 9full page interview), Chicago Art Scene (front cover), Chicago Tribune Magazine (major color article), Chicago Japanese American News, Strong Coffee, Reader, Milwaukee Journal, Clarion, Kaleidoscope, Laurel Leader-Call, The Advertiser News, Times-Picayune (front page, major color articles), Michigan Alumnus (major color article), Michigan Today (major color article), Mardi Gras Guide (major color article), The Ann Arbor News (front covers), Park Slope Courier (color pages), 24/7 (color pages), Brooklyn Free Press (front cover) and The World Tribune.

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Reference (videos featuring sea rabbits and Dr. Takeshi Yamada):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ek-GsW9ay0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJK04yQUX2o&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrCCxV5S-EE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QnW26dQKg&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpVCqEjFXk0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NlcIZTFIj8&feature=fvw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UPzGvwq57g

s87.photobucket.com/albums/k130/katiecavell/NYC%2008/Coney%20Island/?action=view&current=SeaRabbitVid.mp4

www.animalnewyork.com/2012/what-are-you-doing-tonight-con...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAdsChmSR8

 

Reference (sea rabbit artifacts)

www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/06/coney-island-sea-rabbit...

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417188428/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417189548/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5416579163/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417191794/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192426/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192938/in/photostream

 

Reference (flickr):

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit15/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit14/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit13

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit12

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit11

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit10

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit9/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit8/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit7

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit6

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit5/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit4/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit2/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit1/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders3/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders2

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/

www.flickr.com/photos/takeshiyamadapaintings/

 

Reference (newspaper articles and reviews):

www.amctv.com/shows/immortalized/about

blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/immortalized-cast-photos/...

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021750...

www.villagevoice.com/2006-11-07/nyc-life/the-stuffing-dre...

karlshuker.blogspot.com/2011/06/giant-sea-serpents-and-ch...

amusingthezillion.com/2011/12/08/takeshi-yamadas-jersey-d...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/12/07/art-of-the-day-freak-tax...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/10/27/oct-29-at-coney-island-l...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/09/18/photo-of-the-day-takeshi...

amusingthezillion.com/2009/11/07/thru-dec-31-at-coney-isl...

4strange.blogspot.com/2009/02/ten-of-takeshi-yamada-colle...

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/5440224421/siz...

 

Reference (fine art websites):

www.roguetaxidermy.com/members_detail.php?id=528

www.brooklynartproject.com/photo/photo/listForContributor...

www.bsagarts.org/member-listing/takeshi-yamada/

www.horseshoecrab.org/poem/feature/takeshi.html

www.artfagcity.com/2012/09/06/recommended-go-brooklyn-stu...

 

Reference (other videos):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=otSh91iC3C4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhIR-lz1Mrs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttREu63Ksg

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

About Dr. Takeshi Yamada:

 

Educator, medical assistant, author and artist Takeshi Yamada was born and raised at a traditional and respectable house of samurai in Osaka, Japan in 1960. He studied art at Nakanoshima College of Art in Osaka, Japan. As an international exchange student of Osaka Art University, he moved to the United States in 1983 and studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA and Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD in 1983-85, and completed his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1985.

 

Yamada obtained his Master of Fine Art Degree in 1987 at the University of Michigan, School of Art in Ann Arbor, MI. Yamada’s “Visual Anthropology Artworks” reflects unique, distinctive and often quickly disappearing culture around him. In 1987, Yamada moved to Chicago, and by 1990, Yamada successfully fused Eastern and Western visual culture and variety of cross-cultural mythology in urban allegories, and he became a major figure of the River North (“SUHU” district) art scene. During that time he also developed a provocative media persona and established his unique style of super-realism paintings furnishing ghostly images of people and optically enhanced pictorial structures. By 1990, his artworks were widely exhibited internationally. In 2000, Yamada moved to New York City.

 

Today, he is highly media-featured and internationally famed for his “rogue taxidermy” sculptures and large-scale installations, which he calls “specimens” rather than “artworks”. He also calls himself “super artist” and “gate keeper” rather than the “(self-expressing) artist“. His passion for Cabinet of Curiosities started when he was in kindergarten, collecting natural specimens and built his own Wunderkammer (German word to express “Cabinet of Curiosities“). At age eight, he started creating “rogue taxidermy monsters” such as two-headed lizards, by assembling different parts of animal carcasses.

 

Internationally, Yamada had over 600 major fine art exhibitions including 50 solo exhibitions including Spain, The Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Columbia, and the United States. Yamada also taught classes and made public speeches at over 40 educational institutions including American Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State Museum, Laurenand Rogers Museum of Art, International Museum of Surgical Science, University of Minnesota, Montana State University, Eastern Oregon University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Mount Vernon Nazarene College, Salem State College, Osaka College of Arts, Chemeketa Community College, Maryland Institute College of Art, etc. Yamada’s artworks are collection of over 30 museums and universities in addition to hundreds of corporate/private art collectors internationally. Yamada and his artworks were featured in over 400 video websites. In addition, rogue taxidermy artworks, sideshow gaffs, cryptozoological artworks, large sideshow banners and showfronts created by Yamada in the last 40 years have been exhibited at over 100 of state fairs and festivals annually nationwide, up to and including the present.

  

Yamada won numerous prestigious awards and honors i.e., “International Man of the Year”, “Outstanding Artists and Designers of the 20th Century”, “2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century”, “International Educator of the Year”, “One Thousand Great Americans”, “Outstanding People of the 20th Century”, “21st Century Award for Achievement”, “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in The World”. The Mayors of New Orleans, Louisiana and Gary, Indiana awarded him the “Key to the City”. Yamada’s artworks are collections of many museums and universities/colleges i.e., Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Chicago Athenaeum Museum, Eastern Oregon University, Montana State University and Ohio State University.

 

Yamada was profiled in numerous TV programs in the United States, Japan and Philippine, Columbia, i.e., A&E History Channel, Brooklyn Cable Access Television, “Chicago’s Very Own” in Chicago, “Takeshi Yamada’s Divine Comedy” in New Orleans, and Chicago Public Television’s Channel ID. Yamada also published 22 books based on his each major fine art projects i.e., “Homage to the Horseshoe Crab”, Medical Journal of the Artist”, “Graphic Works 1996-1999”, “Phantom City”, “Divine Comedy”, “Miniatures”, “Louisville”, “Visual Anthropology 2000”, “Heaven and Hell”, “Citizen Kings” and “Dukes and Saints” in the United States. In prints, Yamada and his artworks have been featured in numerous books, magazine and newspapers internationally i.e., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time out New York (full page color interview), Washington Times, The Fine Art Index, New American Paintings, Village Voice 9full page interview), Chicago Art Scene (front cover), Chicago Tribune Magazine (major color article), Chicago Japanese American News, Strong Coffee, Reader, Milwaukee Journal, Clarion, Kaleidoscope, Laurel Leader-Call, The Advertiser News, Times-Picayune (front page, major color articles), Michigan Alumnus (major color article), Michigan Today (major color article), Mardi Gras Guide (major color article), The Ann Arbor News (front covers), Park Slope Courier (color pages), 24/7 (color pages), Brooklyn Free Press (front cover) and The World Tribune.

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Reference (videos featuring sea rabbits and Dr. Takeshi Yamada):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ek-GsW9ay0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJK04yQUX2o&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrCCxV5S-EE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QnW26dQKg&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpVCqEjFXk0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NlcIZTFIj8&feature=fvw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UPzGvwq57g

s87.photobucket.com/albums/k130/katiecavell/NYC%2008/Coney%20Island/?action=view&current=SeaRabbitVid.mp4

www.animalnewyork.com/2012/what-are-you-doing-tonight-con...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAdsChmSR8

 

Reference (sea rabbit artifacts)

www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/06/coney-island-sea-rabbit...

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417188428/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417189548/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5416579163/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417191794/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192426/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192938/in/photostream

 

Reference (flickr):

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit15/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit14/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit13

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit12

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit11

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit10

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit9/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit8/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit7

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit6

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit5/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit4/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit2/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit1/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders3/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders2

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/

www.flickr.com/photos/takeshiyamadapaintings/

 

Reference (newspaper articles and reviews):

www.amctv.com/shows/immortalized/about

blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/immortalized-cast-photos/...

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021750...

www.villagevoice.com/2006-11-07/nyc-life/the-stuffing-dre...

karlshuker.blogspot.com/2011/06/giant-sea-serpents-and-ch...

amusingthezillion.com/2011/12/08/takeshi-yamadas-jersey-d...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/12/07/art-of-the-day-freak-tax...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/10/27/oct-29-at-coney-island-l...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/09/18/photo-of-the-day-takeshi...

amusingthezillion.com/2009/11/07/thru-dec-31-at-coney-isl...

4strange.blogspot.com/2009/02/ten-of-takeshi-yamada-colle...

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/5440224421/siz...

 

Reference (fine art websites):

www.roguetaxidermy.com/members_detail.php?id=528

www.brooklynartproject.com/photo/photo/listForContributor...

www.bsagarts.org/member-listing/takeshi-yamada/

www.horseshoecrab.org/poem/feature/takeshi.html

www.artfagcity.com/2012/09/06/recommended-go-brooklyn-stu...

 

Reference (other videos):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=otSh91iC3C4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhIR-lz1Mrs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttREu63Ksg

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Commentary.

 

World famous slopes plunge into the cryptid-hunter’s mecca or the alcoholic’s hallucination centre.

True or not, the “monster” saga should never

diminish or over-ride the sobering beauty and spirit of this place.

 

Looking south from over 800 feet above Lairgmore we see the sharply reflected, pine-laden slopes of Tor Point towards the north-eastern end of Loch Ness.

Across the waters above the village of Dores

the mast marks a point over 1,500 feet above the looming depths.

 

An iconic view of an iconic lake.

How could a thousand foot deep chasm, twenty-three miles long and up to a mile and a half wide, with an endless food supply, never frozen water, blocked from the sea 10,000 years ago, harbour a colony of unidentified creatures?

Impossible!

Ridiculous!

 

About Dr. Takeshi Yamada:

 

Educator, medical assistant, author and artist Takeshi Yamada was born and raised at a traditional and respectable house of samurai in Osaka, Japan in 1960. He studied art at Nakanoshima College of Art in Osaka, Japan. As an international exchange student of Osaka Art University, he moved to the United States in 1983 and studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA and Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD in 1983-85, and completed his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1985.

 

Yamada obtained his Master of Fine Art Degree in 1987 at the University of Michigan, School of Art in Ann Arbor, MI. Yamada’s “Visual Anthropology Artworks” reflects unique, distinctive and often quickly disappearing culture around him. In 1987, Yamada moved to Chicago, and by 1990, Yamada successfully fused Eastern and Western visual culture and variety of cross-cultural mythology in urban allegories, and he became a major figure of the River North (“SUHU” district) art scene. During that time he also developed a provocative media persona and established his unique style of super-realism paintings furnishing ghostly images of people and optically enhanced pictorial structures. By 1990, his artworks were widely exhibited internationally. In 2000, Yamada moved to New York City.

 

Today, he is highly media-featured and internationally famed for his “rogue taxidermy” sculptures and large-scale installations, which he calls “specimens” rather than “artworks”. He also calls himself “super artist” and “gate keeper” rather than the “(self-expressing) artist“. His passion for Cabinet of Curiosities started when he was in kindergarten, collecting natural specimens and built his own Wunderkammer (German word to express “Cabinet of Curiosities“). At age eight, he started creating “rogue taxidermy monsters” such as two-headed lizards, by assembling different parts of animal carcasses.

 

Internationally, Yamada had over 600 major fine art exhibitions including 50 solo exhibitions including Spain, The Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Columbia, and the United States. Yamada also taught classes and made public speeches at over 40 educational institutions including American Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State Museum, Laurenand Rogers Museum of Art, International Museum of Surgical Science, University of Minnesota, Montana State University, Eastern Oregon University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Mount Vernon Nazarene College, Salem State College, Osaka College of Arts, Chemeketa Community College, Maryland Institute College of Art, etc. Yamada’s artworks are collection of over 30 museums and universities in addition to hundreds of corporate/private art collectors internationally. Yamada and his artworks were featured in over 400 video websites. In addition, rogue taxidermy artworks, sideshow gaffs, cryptozoological artworks, large sideshow banners and showfronts created by Yamada in the last 40 years have been exhibited at over 100 of state fairs and festivals annually nationwide, up to and including the present.

  

Yamada won numerous prestigious awards and honors i.e., “International Man of the Year”, “Outstanding Artists and Designers of the 20th Century”, “2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century”, “International Educator of the Year”, “One Thousand Great Americans”, “Outstanding People of the 20th Century”, “21st Century Award for Achievement”, “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in The World”. The Mayors of New Orleans, Louisiana and Gary, Indiana awarded him the “Key to the City”. Yamada’s artworks are collections of many museums and universities/colleges i.e., Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Chicago Athenaeum Museum, Eastern Oregon University, Montana State University and Ohio State University.

 

Yamada was profiled in numerous TV programs in the United States, Japan and Philippine, Columbia, i.e., A&E History Channel, Brooklyn Cable Access Television, “Chicago’s Very Own” in Chicago, “Takeshi Yamada’s Divine Comedy” in New Orleans, and Chicago Public Television’s Channel ID. Yamada also published 22 books based on his each major fine art projects i.e., “Homage to the Horseshoe Crab”, Medical Journal of the Artist”, “Graphic Works 1996-1999”, “Phantom City”, “Divine Comedy”, “Miniatures”, “Louisville”, “Visual Anthropology 2000”, “Heaven and Hell”, “Citizen Kings” and “Dukes and Saints” in the United States. In prints, Yamada and his artworks have been featured in numerous books, magazine and newspapers internationally i.e., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time out New York (full page color interview), Washington Times, The Fine Art Index, New American Paintings, Village Voice 9full page interview), Chicago Art Scene (front cover), Chicago Tribune Magazine (major color article), Chicago Japanese American News, Strong Coffee, Reader, Milwaukee Journal, Clarion, Kaleidoscope, Laurel Leader-Call, The Advertiser News, Times-Picayune (front page, major color articles), Michigan Alumnus (major color article), Michigan Today (major color article), Mardi Gras Guide (major color article), The Ann Arbor News (front covers), Park Slope Courier (color pages), 24/7 (color pages), Brooklyn Free Press (front cover) and The World Tribune.

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Reference (videos featuring sea rabbits and Dr. Takeshi Yamada):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ek-GsW9ay0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJK04yQUX2o&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrCCxV5S-EE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QnW26dQKg&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpVCqEjFXk0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NlcIZTFIj8&feature=fvw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UPzGvwq57g

s87.photobucket.com/albums/k130/katiecavell/NYC%2008/Coney%20Island/?action=view&current=SeaRabbitVid.mp4

www.animalnewyork.com/2012/what-are-you-doing-tonight-con...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAdsChmSR8

 

Reference (sea rabbit artifacts)

www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/06/coney-island-sea-rabbit...

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417188428/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417189548/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5416579163/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417191794/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192426/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192938/in/photostream

 

Reference (flickr):

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit15/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit14/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit13

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit12

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit11

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit10

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit9/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit8/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit7

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit6

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit5/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit4/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit2/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit1/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders3/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders2

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/

www.flickr.com/photos/takeshiyamadapaintings/

 

Reference (newspaper articles and reviews):

www.amctv.com/shows/immortalized/about

blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/immortalized-cast-photos/...

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021750...

www.villagevoice.com/2006-11-07/nyc-life/the-stuffing-dre...

karlshuker.blogspot.com/2011/06/giant-sea-serpents-and-ch...

amusingthezillion.com/2011/12/08/takeshi-yamadas-jersey-d...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/12/07/art-of-the-day-freak-tax...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/10/27/oct-29-at-coney-island-l...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/09/18/photo-of-the-day-takeshi...

amusingthezillion.com/2009/11/07/thru-dec-31-at-coney-isl...

4strange.blogspot.com/2009/02/ten-of-takeshi-yamada-colle...

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/5440224421/siz...

 

Reference (fine art websites):

www.roguetaxidermy.com/members_detail.php?id=528

www.brooklynartproject.com/photo/photo/listForContributor...

www.bsagarts.org/member-listing/takeshi-yamada/

www.horseshoecrab.org/poem/feature/takeshi.html

www.artfagcity.com/2012/09/06/recommended-go-brooklyn-stu...

 

Reference (other videos):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=otSh91iC3C4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhIR-lz1Mrs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttREu63Ksg

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

About Dr. Takeshi Yamada:

 

Educator, medical assistant, author and artist Takeshi Yamada was born and raised at a traditional and respectable house of samurai in Osaka, Japan in 1960. He studied art at Nakanoshima College of Art in Osaka, Japan. As an international exchange student of Osaka Art University, he moved to the United States in 1983 and studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA and Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD in 1983-85, and completed his Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1985.

 

Yamada obtained his Master of Fine Art Degree in 1987 at the University of Michigan, School of Art in Ann Arbor, MI. Yamada’s “Visual Anthropology Artworks” reflects unique, distinctive and often quickly disappearing culture around him. In 1987, Yamada moved to Chicago, and by 1990, Yamada successfully fused Eastern and Western visual culture and variety of cross-cultural mythology in urban allegories, and he became a major figure of the River North (“SUHU” district) art scene. During that time he also developed a provocative media persona and established his unique style of super-realism paintings furnishing ghostly images of people and optically enhanced pictorial structures. By 1990, his artworks were widely exhibited internationally. In 2000, Yamada moved to New York City.

 

Today, he is highly media-featured and internationally famed for his “rogue taxidermy” sculptures and large-scale installations, which he calls “specimens” rather than “artworks”. He also calls himself “super artist” and “gate keeper” rather than the “(self-expressing) artist“. His passion for Cabinet of Curiosities started when he was in kindergarten, collecting natural specimens and built his own Wunderkammer (German word to express “Cabinet of Curiosities“). At age eight, he started creating “rogue taxidermy monsters” such as two-headed lizards, by assembling different parts of animal carcasses.

 

Internationally, Yamada had over 600 major fine art exhibitions including 50 solo exhibitions including Spain, The Netherlands, Japan, Canada, Columbia, and the United States. Yamada also taught classes and made public speeches at over 40 educational institutions including American Museum of Natural History, Louisiana State Museum, Laurenand Rogers Museum of Art, International Museum of Surgical Science, University of Minnesota, Montana State University, Eastern Oregon University, Illinois Institute of Technology, Mount Vernon Nazarene College, Salem State College, Osaka College of Arts, Chemeketa Community College, Maryland Institute College of Art, etc. Yamada’s artworks are collection of over 30 museums and universities in addition to hundreds of corporate/private art collectors internationally. Yamada and his artworks were featured in over 400 video websites. In addition, rogue taxidermy artworks, sideshow gaffs, cryptozoological artworks, large sideshow banners and showfronts created by Yamada in the last 40 years have been exhibited at over 100 of state fairs and festivals annually nationwide, up to and including the present.

  

Yamada won numerous prestigious awards and honors i.e., “International Man of the Year”, “Outstanding Artists and Designers of the 20th Century”, “2000 Outstanding Intellectuals of the 21st Century”, “International Educator of the Year”, “One Thousand Great Americans”, “Outstanding People of the 20th Century”, “21st Century Award for Achievement”, “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in The World”. The Mayors of New Orleans, Louisiana and Gary, Indiana awarded him the “Key to the City”. Yamada’s artworks are collections of many museums and universities/colleges i.e., Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Chicago Athenaeum Museum, Eastern Oregon University, Montana State University and Ohio State University.

 

Yamada was profiled in numerous TV programs in the United States, Japan and Philippine, Columbia, i.e., A&E History Channel, Brooklyn Cable Access Television, “Chicago’s Very Own” in Chicago, “Takeshi Yamada’s Divine Comedy” in New Orleans, and Chicago Public Television’s Channel ID. Yamada also published 22 books based on his each major fine art projects i.e., “Homage to the Horseshoe Crab”, Medical Journal of the Artist”, “Graphic Works 1996-1999”, “Phantom City”, “Divine Comedy”, “Miniatures”, “Louisville”, “Visual Anthropology 2000”, “Heaven and Hell”, “Citizen Kings” and “Dukes and Saints” in the United States. In prints, Yamada and his artworks have been featured in numerous books, magazine and newspapers internationally i.e., The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time out New York (full page color interview), Washington Times, The Fine Art Index, New American Paintings, Village Voice 9full page interview), Chicago Art Scene (front cover), Chicago Tribune Magazine (major color article), Chicago Japanese American News, Strong Coffee, Reader, Milwaukee Journal, Clarion, Kaleidoscope, Laurel Leader-Call, The Advertiser News, Times-Picayune (front page, major color articles), Michigan Alumnus (major color article), Michigan Today (major color article), Mardi Gras Guide (major color article), The Ann Arbor News (front covers), Park Slope Courier (color pages), 24/7 (color pages), Brooklyn Free Press (front cover) and The World Tribune.

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

Reference (videos featuring sea rabbits and Dr. Takeshi Yamada):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ek-GsW9ay0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJK04yQUX2o&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrCCxV5S-EE

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QnW26dQKg&feature=related

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpVCqEjFXk0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NlcIZTFIj8&feature=fvw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UPzGvwq57g

s87.photobucket.com/albums/k130/katiecavell/NYC%2008/Coney%20Island/?action=view&current=SeaRabbitVid.mp4

www.animalnewyork.com/2012/what-are-you-doing-tonight-con...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeAdsChmSR8

 

Reference (sea rabbit artifacts)

www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/06/coney-island-sea-rabbit...

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417188428/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417189548/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5416579163/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417191794/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192426/in/photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/5417192938/in/photostream

 

Reference (flickr):

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit15/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit14/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit13

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit12

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit11

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit10

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit9/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit8/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit7

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit6

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit5/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit4/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit3/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit2/

www.flickr.com/photos/searabbit1/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders3/

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders2

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/

www.flickr.com/photos/takeshiyamadapaintings/

 

Reference (newspaper articles and reviews):

www.amctv.com/shows/immortalized/about

blogs.amctv.com/photo-galleries/immortalized-cast-photos/...

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021750...

www.villagevoice.com/2006-11-07/nyc-life/the-stuffing-dre...

karlshuker.blogspot.com/2011/06/giant-sea-serpents-and-ch...

amusingthezillion.com/2011/12/08/takeshi-yamadas-jersey-d...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/12/07/art-of-the-day-freak-tax...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/10/27/oct-29-at-coney-island-l...

amusingthezillion.com/2010/09/18/photo-of-the-day-takeshi...

amusingthezillion.com/2009/11/07/thru-dec-31-at-coney-isl...

4strange.blogspot.com/2009/02/ten-of-takeshi-yamada-colle...

www.flickr.com/photos/museumofworldwonders/5440224421/siz...

 

Reference (fine art websites):

www.roguetaxidermy.com/members_detail.php?id=528

www.brooklynartproject.com/photo/photo/listForContributor...

www.bsagarts.org/member-listing/takeshi-yamada/

www.horseshoecrab.org/poem/feature/takeshi.html

www.artfagcity.com/2012/09/06/recommended-go-brooklyn-stu...

 

Reference (other videos):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=otSh91iC3C4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhIR-lz1Mrs

www.youtube.com/watch?v=BttREu63Ksg

 

(updated November 24, 2012)

 

I swear I've seen that "get off of my lawn" look before!

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